Actaeon
by SelDear
Summary: You should fight as though the odds aren't against you. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad."
1. Prologue: The Last Fall

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** I've never done a chaptered story like this before, certainly not one of this scale. All hail the majesty and courage of the betas in being willing to work through this with me! I request your lenience with my depiction of the Batclan; I have little experience with them, but they shouldered their way into the story and are insisting on playing a significant part.  
  
For timeline's sake, this occurs shortly after the JLU animated series episodes '_This Little Piggy_' and '_Fearful Symmetry_' but will not be written in continuity with anything afterwards.

**Actaeon **

_Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad._

----

**Prologue: The Last Fall**

They ran him to earth in the Batcave.

_Can you hear the baying of the hounds?_

His pursuers weren't far behind. The Batmobile's tiny screens glimmered at him, scrolling data across their luminescent surfaces. He noted his pursuers' positions on the radar before switching the systems off. Then he emerged from the vehicle into the tall vault of the cave.

Soft lighting slunk over the curves of his armour, the material of his cape, hesitating to cling to him, as if sensing that he shunned its touch. He moved through the still air, and his motion stirred the darkness around him, trailing invisible eddies of night in his wake as he strode up the stairs to the main computer console.

The leather of his chair was butter soft, and he settled into it. It moulded to his seat and posture as he called up the screens with the data he wanted. Sensors flashed and beeped, and the screens flashed their information at him. From his vantage point at the console, he had audio-visual, infrared and radar on the cave and every entrance to it.

He called up a report, and the letters flashed across the screen as the scans ran through the mansion overhead and the cave below, determining life forms, seeking out intruders.

Beneath the lenses of his cowl, dark eyes narrowed at the information.

The bats lurked amidst the overhead vaults of the cavern, their thickly-clustered numbers making a body count impossible. Nothing unusual there.

Outside the mansion, various small creatures scurried around, their heat scans tiny blips on the infrared screen. Nothing for him to concern himself with. The creatures who hunted him tonight were larger and more dangerous than they.

Within the mansion, nothing moved. Alfred slumbered in his bedroom. Scans showed the tall, spare form of the old retainer in unaccustomed repose, resting in the dark of the night. Tonight, for once, he had not waited up for his master.

A betrayal? Or a wisdom?

Batman didn't know. Something in him was glad the old man would not be present for this confrontation. _Sleep well, old friend. I would not have you witness this for all the money in Wayne Enterprises._

No father should have to watch his children fall.

It would not Batman's first fall, but it might very well be his last.

According to the Bible story, Adam's first fall had been the most costly. In Batman's experience, it was the last fall that killed a man.

He could not deny that in the last few weeks he'd used his abilities in more direct ways than was usual for him. But what had he done, in the end? Cleaned up the city a little faster, added one more body to the morgue and reduced the drain of resources at Arkham. No, it wasn't his usual _modus operandi_, but that didn't justify this manhunt.

_Bathunt?_ His mouth curved sardonically at the thought, before he began setting up the defenses against the people he'd once fought beside, and his smile faded.

They would come. They would come because not to come, to leave him at large was unthinkable. A danger to Gotham must be taken down, even if that danger was the Batman; _especially_ if that danger was the Batman.

How well he'd trained the hounds that hunted him.

But these students were still young. They hadn't yet surpassed the master.

Perhaps they never would.

He heard Robin's motorcycle first. There was no way to disguise the noise, and the young man hadn't even tried. Tim would take the most direct route; reason first, only resorting to force if all else failed. His trust in his mentor would be his undoing. He was the least of Batman's worries.

His fingers moved over the computer keys, setting traps, defining parameters. The hounds would come a-hunting, and they would find themselves surprised.

Of course, while Robin was young enough - and innocent enough - to be willing to attempt reason, he couldn't count on the other two being quite so accommodating.

"Batman..." Robin's feet pattered up the stairs. "I was listening to the scanner. They said..." He paused. "They said you threw a man off the Civic building..."

"It wasn't a man," Batman interrupted.

Robin paused, "What?"

"It wasn't a man." He could say that without remorse. Calling the thing he'd tossed from the building a 'man' was like calling black, white; there was no truth in it.

"So you threw him off the building." And now there was something in his protég's voice that he'd never heard directed at him before: distrust. "That's not like you, Bruce."

Maybe it was the tone that moved him to action, maybe the use of his name. Either that, or the sounds of the alarms going off in his earpiece. Someone was approaching the cave, and a glance at the terminal instantly showed him who. He rose from his chair, noting the way the boy took an instinctive step back. "I stopped a criminal--"

"You never resorted to killing them before..." Even as the boy protested, Batman was on the move.

The boy's reflexes were fast; but Batman was faster. He'd trained Tim in defence, watched him study, grow, develop. It was a moment's work to get in under those defences and knock him unconscious with a quick jab at a pressure-point. There was a second of panic, and then the boy went limp in his arms, slender limbs relaxing.

"Things change..." Bruce murmured gently as he picked up the teenager and laid him out in the med bay. Tim would wake up in several hours, none the worse for his unconsciousness, although he might have a slight headache from the jab he'd received.

The boy was safely out of it, at least.

He turned, surveying the cave.

His next assailant would be older than Tim, more cunning; but even in that cunning, there would be a certain transparency about his plans...

Overhead, bats squeaked, and he turned and frowned up at the colony. Unusual....

The batarang whistled past his head, lodged in the wall and exploded out, a mask of smoke and fire.

Batman had a filter mask out of his belt, even as he switched his lenses to infrared viewing. There was a risk to his defence measures, of course. He had to assume his opponent would foresee his actions and take suitable measures. But he had other tricks on his belt.

"Ventilators high," he growled, just before he slipped the filter mask across his face and reached for a batarang.

Abruptly, the cave echoed with the whine of massive turbines as they increased their capacity at his voiceprint order. The bats rustled overhead, disturbed by the sudden noise, and quite a few dropped, squeaking madly.

He had no attention for them. Nightwing threw a punch that Batman blocked high, even as he swung his own fist low and on the left.

"Lovely way to greet your ward," Nightwing chided, the edge of mockery clear in his voice as he took the blow on his hip, turning to lessen the impact. His hand jabbed towards Batman's throat.

"About as charming as the way you greet your guardian," Batman responded with word and punch. Nightwing brought his hand up and blocked, as expected.

There was a certain arrogance in the young man's attitude, the belief that he could outthink or outfight the man by whom he'd been trained. Batman defended himself against a flurry of attacks, noting in the process that Nightwing had been learning a few new moves. They were enough to keep him on the defence, but not enough to worry him.

He frowned as Nightwing attacked him again. To defeat him, his ward would have to launch an all-out attack against Batman, and although he was pressing them back across the cave, that wasn't happening.

Overhead, several bats squeaked, and Batman suddenly realised what was happening. He flung the batarang directly upwards and heard it impact into the cave ceiling. The next moment, the air above their heads was suddenly filled with the shriek of bats – and a falling girl. She had the presence of mind to fling a batarang to the ceiling as she dropped, turning a tumbling plunge into a graceful descent.

Nightwing's expression gave away the ruse as he struke again.

Interesting. _Not just an attack but also an ambush..._

The dual attack made things a little tricky, but gave him twice as much target. Then, too, he knew their weaknesses as they knew his.

Two weeks ago, Nightwing had been grazed in the left arm by a bullet from one of Two-Face's thugs during a failed heist. It was only a flesh wound, but one that reduced his effectiveness with that arm. Ruthlessly, Batman concentrated his attacks on that side. His intent was not to kill Nightwing, just to take him out first.

He slammed a punch at Nightwing's shoulder, connecting hard. A huff of pain escaped the younger man, but his response was fluid. A hand struck Batman's inside elbow, forcing the joint to bend, before Nightwing used the resistance to rebound-slam his elbow to his mentor's jaw.

He got a glimpse of Batgirl's hair out of his peripheral vision. She was behind him, and even as he turned, he felt and heard metal scrape on polyvinyl carbonate. Two days ago, during the weekly testing of his suit, he'd discovered a slight weakness in the costume – a tiny point where the application of suitable pressure would cause the material to give. It wasn't much of a weakness, but it was enough for something thin and metallic to reach his unguarded skin.

Something thin and metallic like a needle containing sleep drops.

_Clever._

It would take someone very nimble and with a good sense of timing to get the positioning right. It would take someone with courage to stick it in without fear of hitting the spinal column or his kidneys. It would also take someone who didn't know that one day ago, he'd gotten the weakness repaired so it was no longer an Achilles heel.

Two out of three wasn't bad. It just wasn't enough.

He heard her curse, and lashed out with his left arm, using the momentum from Nightwing's attack to turn .The action spun himself out of the younger man's reach, and gave him added energy with which to punch Batgirl firmly in the chestplate, sending her reeling back. A weighted net took Batgirl down. She'd get out of it, of course, but it would take a few precious seconds during which he would only have Nightwing to get into position. And then the trap would be sprung.

As he turned to confront Nightwing again, he flipped his lenses back to normal sight and watched the young man crouch slightly as they faced off in wrestler's stances.

"At least Tim asked first," he said.

"He's younger," Nightwing responded tersely. The strong, youthful features convulsed in something like bitterness, visible around the concealing eyemask. "He still believes in you." The heel of Nightwing's boot struck Batman hard and square in the side of the knee. In spite of the absorbent armour, the impact still jarred up his thigh and he fell backwards and sideways, somersaulting heels-over-cape, to rise up with both assailants in his sights.

"And you don't?"

"Good guess," Nightwing retorted. Without any obvious communication between them, the two young fighters separated, drawing his attention in opposite directions. They would come at him from two sides given the opportunity, but enough was enough.

The flung batarang lodged firmly in its target and the retracting wire lifted him neatly over their heads as they leapt in at him. A pair of weighted bolas slowed them down. And then he dropped the batarang.

Nightwing had just managed to free himself with some kind of pressure-controlled razor blades that slipped out from the sides of his gloves, while Batgirl was still bound. She looked up at the clatter, and he saw comprehension dawn on her face as she sliced viciously at the bolas that bound her.

Too late.

Another superhero - one with a more upbeat style - might have uttered the term, '_Oops_!' Batman simply watched from his vantage point as Nightwing looked from the fallen batarang to his hanging mentor, and came to a conclusion that was entirely correct.

The young man ran - for Batgirl, Batman noticed – but it was already too late. The nerve gas required skin contact, not inhalation, and it was as strong as Vexxon or VX. A few milligrams on exposed flesh would induce the poison's result.

It didn't kill. It simply shut down specific sets of muscle groups for several hours, resulting in temporary paralysis. In addition to that, it was heavier than air, so it stayed low on the ground. Where Nightwing and Batgirl were. Where Batman wasn't.

Always be prepared.

As Nightwing reached Batgirl and hauled her up, they jerked. The compound swirled around them, infecting them, numbing them. They tried to run, but their muscles wouldn't obey them. They sprawled, ungainly, across the floor of the Batcave. They'd come to no harm there, but they wouldn't be able to fight him either.

"You really thought the two of you could take me?" Dick might be that arrogant, but he'd thought Barbara would have more sense...

"No." Dick managed as his head lolled back.

The punch came out of nowhere. No alarms sounded, no sirens wailed, there wasn't even a beep from his computer. She arrived at his side like a ghost – or like someone for whom the warning parameters had been deleted. Even as he flew through the air with the force of her blow, a part of him registered that Barbara must have set up a secondary interface on the computers to deceive him.

He'd been set up.

The floor was hard and bruising against his back and he felt the tingle of the nerve gas against his skin. He wasn't worried - he'd injected himself with the antidote over half an hour ago - but it seemed that someone else was.

"_Hsinav sag erven!_" He barely heard the incantation, let alone realised what it meant. A moment later, the tingling was fading from his skin and the nerve gas was gone.

_Zatanna._ She stepped out of the darkness, even as Diana's boots touched the ground.

"Robin's fine," the magician reported. "Just out like a light."

"Check Nightwing and Batgirl," said the Amazon.

"Is he...?"

"We'll see."

It was a conspiracy of women. And he had to admit, bringing Zatanna in had been a good move. He hadn't expected that.

He _had_ expected her.

"Bruce?" Her concern was her undoing as she knelt down beside him. His mouth quirked, and that was all the warning she got before he flipped them over, trapping her beneath his weight.

"Playing possum, Princess." His weight wouldn't hold her down, but the way he'd positioned himself over her made it very difficult to find the leverage to throw him off even with her superior strength. Give him a minute, and she'd find it impossible to get leverage against him.

It would be a temporary measure, but it would last long enough.

The syringe was in his hand and he was thumbing off the lid of the needle when she shouted, "Now!"

Around him there was the soft pattering pop of compressed air darts. His jaw suddenly ached, and when he brushed his hand along the exposed skin of chin and mouth, minute darts tumbled over his fingers. He looked down at Diana, lying prone beneath his thighs, no longer struggling. "Who...?"

Batman lifted up his gaze and saw the angel of death, descending from the ceiling to hover a little way away. Clothed and masked in black, her white wings spread out behind her, pale and broad against the bright scarlet of her hair. She held a tranquilliser gun held in her hands, the muzzle still aimed at him.

_Batgirl?_ It couldn't be. Barbara still lay on the floor, attended to by Zatanna. His senses began to spin, even as the mystery angel hovered and stripped the mask from her face. As she shook out her red-gold locks, the last pieces of the puzzle into place. _A hawk's sight, and not just a hawk's wings..._

This wasn't the ending he'd wanted. Exactly what ending he _had_ wanted, he didn't know, only that this was not it.

Batman had no time for regrets. If they'd drugged him, then he had no time at all. He jerked the needle towards himself, only to have Diana reach up and grab his hand. "Don't." At her plea, he looked from their joined hands to her face, seeing the momentary anger in her eyes at his planned action.

He felt the flex in her body, the shifting of muscles as she gained enough force to thrust him off her, tossing him up into the air as though he weighed no more than a ball. The needle flashed silver as it spun into darkness and was lost to him.

He had others in his belt, but he had lost the presence of mind to reach for them - if he could even have done so while hurtling up towards the roof.

She'd thrown him high, so high, too high - even for the Bat. Higher than he could survive if he tumbled back down to Earth without a batarang and line to break his fall.

The drugs they'd injected into him made it feel as though he was falling upwards. They inhibited any action, any retaliation he might have taken against the triumvirate of women who'd been his downfall: the woman flying overhead, the woman kneeling over Dick and Barbara, and the woman who had planned all this to bring him low.

At the apex of his 'flight,' he felt gravity reclaim him as one of its own, and the weight of his body, of his heavy limbs dragged him down, down, down...

This was his death, the death of the Batman. And, in a way, he welcomed the end; the eternal fall into the shadowing night.

It was the last fall that killed a man. Always.

His senses were fading, one by one, the drug taking away his control - the precious control he had held up above all other things, only to lose it. But he felt the hands that caught him in midair, the arms that wrapped around his body, slowing his fall; a familiar touch, both powerful and gentle.

Her face was a pale oval in the dramatic lighting of the Batcave, the dark curls writhing around her face like Medusa's snakes. He was so intent on her face that he barely felt it when she laid him down on the floor of the Batcave.

Fingers touched his skin, stroked his jaw, but he couldn't feel them. Her lips moved in words he could no longer hear, and he tried to use his lipreading abilities to tell what she was saying, but those skills had deserted him, too.

Darkness coalesced beyond her; in a moment, it would sweep over them both, swallowing them whole. She was beautiful - had always been beautiful, with an exquisite sunlit loveliness that should never have been touched by the shadows he cast.

Bruce moved his fingers to touch her wrist, felt his lips move in an attempt at speech. Two words. Ones he rarely uttered - either as Bruce Wayne, or as Batman.

_I'm sorry._

He saw her expression: deep sadness.

Then he was lost to darkness.

--


	2. Dance Like There's No Tomorrow 1

**Part One: Good Intentions**  
  
**Dance Like There's No** **Tomorrow - 1**

"I believe I owe you a dance," smirked a voice behind her.

Diana of Themiscyra, also known as Wonder Woman, didn't stiffen at the familiar and unfamiliar voice. She _did_ turn her head a little, towards the man who stood, just beyond her shoulder, imposing himself in her personal space as few men would dare. "Mr. Wayne." Her voice was even, and her manner polite, if a little cool. They'd agreed on such a course of interaction up in the Watchtower, hours earlier. If they crossed paths at tonight's function, she would be dismissive and he would be dismissed.

A dance had _not_ been in the plan.

"Come now," and the broad shoulder edged its way neatly into the circle, causing smaller men to shuffle aside, "You wouldn't have me renege on a debt, surely, your Highness?"

The disappointment of her admirers was plain enough, along with the sheer envy that Bruce Wayne had the cojones to do what no other man at the function was bold enough to do: actually ask the famed Wonder Woman for a dance. She withheld her sigh of exasperation, both at her teammate's deviation from the arrangement, and at the way this persona of his so effortlessly intimidated lesser-gifted mortals with his charm. The smile she gave the people around her showed her uppermost feelings: this dance was for politeness sake and nothing else.

She'd been invited to this Charity Ball after helping an aid organisation deliver much-needed supplies to a remote village where their workers were struggling against bureaucracy and corruption from the government. Her involvement with the organisation was fairly low-key, not well known. Evidently, that would change after tonight. Her attendance at this ball was _very_ high profile. She hadn't had a moment's peace to herself all night.

Perhaps that was why she'd agreed to the dance.

Or perhaps it was the powerful tension she could feel in the upper arm and shoulder beneath her hands. The fierce intensity that could be masked by jacket and shirt, but not fully concealed by the air of the charming playboy that he projected to those around the room.

Power had always been an intoxicating aphrodisiac. One only had to look at Zeus' exploits to see that.

"Having a pleasant evening, Mr. Wayne?" Diana asked, deciding that she should at least make civil conversation. Now was not the time to chide her teammate for not following his own rules.

The full mouth smirked at her. "I am now."

Diana dared a glance across at him, and saw the way his lids drooped, heavy over eyes as black as the night in which his soul dwelled. Bruce was watching her like a predator hunting prey, and she felt his fingers pressing a little more firmly at her back, drawing her closer.

Hera grant her patience! "You do realise that it would have been..." She wanted to say 'wiser' but settled for, "...easier to let the debt go unpaid?"

The full mouth twitched a little, and when he replied, there was a hint of the Bat in the resonance of his voice. "But not as much fun."

"And you are so well known for your predisposition to having fun," she responded, careful to sound teasing, at least on the surface. He would hear the sarcasm that was meant for his ears alone.

"I'm well known for a lot of things, your Highness," he responded. "And I try to avoid being in debt."

Which, when applied to the Batman persona, meant he didn't accept help, he didn't show weakness, and he never showed affection.

Diana's fingers briefly flexed on his arm and shoulder, frustrated by the mysteries and intricacies of this man. Of all the men she'd met in Man's World, the one who intrigued her most was the one who was the hardest to reach.

Never let it be said that she wasn't up to a challenge.

They turned with consummate grace, and Diana thanked all the gods in the pantheon that the paparazzi had been forbidden to enter this ball - or, at least, not allowed in with their cameras. There would be no escaping the gossip, but, as the saying went, a picture was worth a thousand words, and the fewer words about this dance, the better.

"If you wished to keep all this low-key," she noted, indicating the room around them and referring to their conversation this morning, "Perhaps you should have picked a less public place to repay the debt?"

"Why, Princess," he smirked, "Are you flirting with me?"

Her question had been directed at Batman, however the answer had definitely come from Bruce Wayne.

This whole 'secret identity' thing was fast becoming annoying.

Diana lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. "I try not to make a habit of flirting with rich kids with issues, Mr. Wayne," she said at her most icily polite.

"Ouch," he murmured, and his wince wasn't all show. "You strike low blows, Princess."

"I've found it can be an effective way of getting the point across," she replied, smoothly.

The dark eyes gleamed, but there was a troubled expression in them, "Well, there are days when it seems I'm very bad at getting the point across, so maybe I should take a lesson from you?"

In other words, _You weren't listening when I said why we were a bad idea._

Diana smiled. "Mr. Wayne, sometimes it's not so much a question of getting the point across, as realising that there is no point." _You were bringing up reasons that don't apply to us._

"Do you always charm your dance partners with existential conversation, Princess? Or is it just me?"

Hera was definitely taking her time with the patience.

They shifted again, and she wondered if there were any gods who would grant her the ability to resist the warmth of his hand as it soaked through the thin material of her gown. Somehow, she doubted it.

At least the dance was drawing to a close, the easy time of the waltz flowing to an inevitable conclusion. "Did you have plans for later tonight, Princess?"

She glanced up at him, surprised. The way he'd asked the question was Bruce Wayne, but the voice had been Batman's. In return, he seemed a little startled by something he saw in her face as she considered her answer. "Not really," she replied at last.

His lips caressed her ear, daringly bold in the room full of people, but his words, although soft, were businesslike. "Top of the Civic Centre at midnight. I want to show you something. Wear black. And you might want to slap me when I pull back. Just to make sure Wayne's reputation remains intact." And when he drew back, the knowing smirk on his face infuriated her to the tips of her pointy-toed shoes.

Diana slapped him. She pulled it, of course, since he got enough beatings in the line of duty with the Justice League - to say nothing of his patrol of Gotham City - without his teammate playing the shrew. The sound echoed loudly through the room, causing heads to turn, eyes to stare, and tongues to wag.

They stopped dancing as she wrested herself from his grip. Around them, people continued dancing, but surreptitiously craned their necks to see this latest development in Bruce Wayne's love life – or lack thereof.

"I don't think so, Mr. Wayne," she said, firmly. Her colour rose as she realised just how many people were watching this little tableau. Somehow, it had been different when she was saving Audrey from the Kasnian rebels - that had been what Flash termed 'superhero stuff.' This was personal.

"I'm not your type, Princess?" Bruce asked, giving her a look that had doubtless melted harder hearts than Diana's.

She rolled her eyes, "I think it's probably closer to say that _I'm_ not _your_ type, Mr. Wayne," she retorted, and turned on her heel to walk away. "Thank you for the dance, and consider the debt paid."

The crowd parted before her, and she didn't look back at him at all, although she heard him make some flippant comment as she went. The people behind her laughed or chuckled, but she resisted the impulse to turn and glare at him - or slap him again, tempting though the thought might be.

Her friend Angelina - one of the directors of the aid organisation - was blinking madly when Diana reached her, "You do realise you just slapped Gotham's most eligible bachelor in the middle of a charity ball?"

"It was quite satisfying actually," she admitted, her irritation with Bruce finding satisfaction the memory of her palm against the smoothness of his jaw. She flexed her hand a little. "And I was nice."

The other woman was struggling not to laugh, "That was _nice_?"

She smiled, demure as a vestal virgin. "I did leave his jaw intact."

Angelina laughed out loud, as Diana accepted a glass of water from one of the waiters and drank it down slowly. It had been warmer out on the dance floor than she'd expected, and she was feeling rather breathless.

"A little hot?" The dark-haired woman gave her a knowing smirk, and Diana rolled her eyes.

"Nothing that a glass of water won't help," Diana said, stopping that conversation right there. "Although I could do with some food."

"You didn't come here straight from the Watchtower, did you?" Angelina asked, suddenly horrified. "Without eating anything?"

She laughed at her friend's horror. "There was nothing worth eating in the Watchtower," she said, frankly. "The League are not generally known for their cooking skills."

"Well, most humans aren't known for their cooking skills either," Angelina said, leading her friend along to the buffet table and handing her a plate.

The woman's voice rent the air. "I can't believe you..." There was a pause as she tried to gather together a suitably exasperated remark, finally just settling for the exclamation, "Bruce!"

Diana turned, just enough to see her teammate being scolded by a blonde beauty in a daringly-cut gown of emerald green. For a man who, it was said, didn't know the meaning of 'apology,' he was doing a very good job of looking penitent.

"Don't be like that, Penny," she heard him say beneath the jumbled conversations. "It was just a dance, and I couldn't resist..."

Diana shook her head. When Bruce had persuaded her into the dance, she hadn't given a thought to the fact that he probably hadn't arrived alone, or that his partner for the evening might want the first dance.

"He really is quite the charmer," Angelina said. She was watching Diana like a hawk. "They say he's very sharp in the boardroom, intelligence at the genius level." She shook her head, "You'd think a man with so many gifts could find ways to use them for others instead of just hoarding it all away for himself."

_If you only knew,_ Diana mused, her eyes lingering on the tall dark head across the room. "I don't believe that he has _everything_ he wants," she limited herself to saying as she turned back to the buffet table.

"Well maybe not," her friend said dryly, "But sometimes it doesn't seem fair that some folks have all the wealth and luxury they can handle, and other folks..." The older woman trailed off and managed a smile as she selected some canapés to fill her plate. "I guess that's the way of the world."

"At least these people seem willing to remember the people who don't have as much as they do," Diana pointed out. "They may not devote their lives to good work, but they're here tonight." _And not everyone has the heart for people that you do, Angelina, or the desire for justice like Bruce does._

Angelina sighed, "I suppose," she said, very quietly, as some others began lingering around the table. "It just angers me how little people are willing to give, particularly when some of them have so much."

The two women sat down at an empty table, and waited for guests to approach them. It didn't take very long for the first people - a middle-aged couple who'd been hovering just beyond the radius of what was polite - to come along and begin talking.

In the years since she'd entered 'Man's World', Diana had found that people would inevitably seek her out if given an opportunity. Celebrity was something that was quite unknown in Themiscyra. All the Amazons knew each other personally, so she'd been not a little disconcerted to suddenly find herself being 'name dropped' by people she didn't know at all.

"_People like to be able to say they've spoken with a real live superhero,_" Flash had explained to her. "_You learn to enjoy it after a while._"

"_You learn to enjoy it if you're the Flash,_" Green Lantern had said, pithily. "_If you're anyone else, you learn not to say anything in public._"

She wasn't as secretive as Green Lantern, nor as gregarious as Flash. In the end, she'd just endured it, privately considering that these people's lives must be just a little sad if the sum total of their valued experience was '_I once spoke with Wonder Woman!_'

When she left the function, past eleven, she had answered enough questions to fill an encyclopaedia of knowledge. Much to her disappointment, very few of them were about her involvement with the organisation, most concerned the Justice League, the Thanagarian invasion, and her private or romantic life.

She had answered the first kind of question only when her friends' privacy was not at stake, the second where she had answers that were not concerning national security, and the third not at all.

Sometimes, she rather thought that Bruce and Clark had something in their assumption of alter egos. It would be nice to just blend into the population; to become an ordinary human being.

_Not that you did all that well during the Thanagarian invasion,_ she reminded herself as she flew through the night, the cool air rippling the thin polyfibre of her dress, on her way to Angelina's apartment.

Maybe she should look into developing another identity, one which could move freely through the world. It wasn't impossible. Bruce had done it, and so had Wally. Clark managed it without ever putting a mask over his features - something which Diana would have to learn herself.

_I'll ask him the next time I see him,_ she decided as she landed on Angelina's balcony. _He'd be willing to at least talk it through with me. Maybe Bruce would help._ If he didn't give her that stare that inquired what on Earth she thought she was doing. He was good at those.

Angelina had given Diana a key to get in and out of her apartment, and a drawer in which to keep some casual clothing, as well as other bits and pieces.

She dressed swiftly and simply in the outfit. It was skin-tight, a deep blue-black in shade, of a heavy material and with a matte surface, unlike the shiny material of her Wonder Woman costume. It covered her from neck to toe, leaving only her face uncovered. Her hair was neatly braided into a single plait, the loose strands brushed out of her face. It was maybe the fifth or sixth time she'd worn this costume and she was slowly getting used to it.

The first time Angelina had told her about the outfit, she'd been reluctant to use it. However, after some explanation of why the outfit was necessary, she agreed to wear it. And she had to admit that it was much harder to spot her in the black.

The supplies she'd dropped for the aid organisation had been done by night, and without any authorisation from the government of the country. The aid organisation insisted it was the only way to get the supplies to the right people on time and, after looking through the options herself, she concurred.

Subterfuge was still not a comfortable thing for her, hence the hesitation to develop herself an 'alter ego' like Clark's. But this...well, this outfit was necessary when she 'ran errands' for the aid organisation.

_Or_, she mused, _when obsessive teammates ask you to join them on their city patrol and ask you to wear black._

As she tidied up behind her and moved through the empty apartment to the door, Diana reflected that there was an interesting shift of mindset in wearing darker colours for the purposes of camouflage. She felt the urge to retreat to the shadows, to move with caution, to take the less direct route. Perhaps she had been spending too much time around Batman.

The thought brought a faint smile to her face as she stepped out into the windy night. She closed and locked Angelina's balcony door, very quietly, and tucked the key into the base of the dead plant sitting on the outside windowsill of her bathroom.

Then she flew for Gotham.

----

"So this is his idea of a date?" Dick asked as she joined him in the shadows down by the ground.

He knew he'd said exactly the wrong thing when Diana turned and glared at him. He hadn't thought anyone but Bruce could give the Batglare, but this was a very good rendition of it. "Okay, not dating, got it." He shouldn't have asked, but he'd been curious, and he knew Babs would want the info... Heck, who was he kidding? _He_ wanted the info.

Diana snorted, softly, then admitted, "I was surprised to be invited along to patrol." Nightwing wondered if she had any idea just how unique that made her in the annals of BatHistory. She probably did. Anyone who'd known Batman for over two weeks recognised that he _really_ wasn't a people person.

Her eyes scanned the darkness ahead of them, her attention on the dockyards.

Heh. Maybe Bruce had been rubbing off on her. She was totally focused on the task at hand. Then again, judging by everything he'd seen and heard, Wonder Woman was a little on the intense side, just not quite as obsessive as Bruce.

Dick recalled himself and flipped his mask's sensors on, tracking movement, body heat, and noting all the little details Bruce had taught him to look for during one of these stakeouts.

"Which containers did you wish to investigate?"

He pointed out the ones he'd seen last night. "But not right now," he added, and indicated one of the warehouses. "We're going that way. They unpacked one of the containers this afternoon, and opening another will be noisy - and obvious without a diversion. We'll do that when we've finished checking out what they unpacked today - it'll be gone by tomorrow night."

"And give him time to find out what the others are up to?"

He shot her a grin over his shoulder before he started off into the darkness, "That, too."

As he wove his way in and out of the huge container boxes, dodging the occasional guard, he kept his eye out for the dogs. There were several of them, and while he had scent bombs to distract them, he didn't particularly wish to resort to that.

Gotham's shipping yards were reasonably large. They handled most of the shipping in and out of the city, and provided secondary transport to the bigger cities along the northeast coast. They were also a prime place for smuggling attempts.

Nightwing recalled his quip to Batman earlier, watching his mentor and Diana as they stood on the warehouse roof some hundred fifty yards away. "_Y'know, couldn't you have chosen a city that doesn't breed crime like rabbits?_" Then Diana had walked to the edge of the roof and crouched down, like a gargoyle watching over the Gotham Port Authority building. Definitely one of the best-looking gargoyles Nightwing had ever seen.

He'd switched to a private channel to speak to Bruce alone, and hoped that Diana's super-hearing didn't stretch that far if she didn't concentrate. "_I thought you didn't want the League involved in Gotham._" Particularly the patrols.

His answer had been a softly-growled, "_I have my reasons._"

Yup, that was Bruce. About as forthcoming as...well, as one of Gotham's gargoyles.

She followed him with a stealthiness that surprised him. The League did things in a certain way, Batman did them in another. While the two might sometimes mesh, there were just as many situations when they would clash - more, in fact. Which made Wonder Woman's inclusion tonight a puzzle. One that he'd talk over with Babs tomorrow, perhaps. She might have insights into Bruce's mind that he didn't.

Dick had to admit, he hadn't been all that close to Bruce lately, old hurts and quarrels rising up between them and affecting everything they said and did. Nothing new, there, old dance, same steps, one more time for the dummies.

They paused at the door to one of the warehouses that the guards had passed a good five minutes ago. They wouldn't be back for another fifty minutes, which left plenty of time to get inside, check out the boxes unpacked from the container earlier today, and get back out before the guards came around again.

Metal scraped softly against metal as he picked the lock, stretching his ears to hear not only the click of the padlock, but also the distant steps of the security guards.

Inside the warehouse, it was pitch black, and he switched his lenses to nightvision. Diana had no need of night-vision goggles, she moved through the darkness as though it were broad daylight, slipping between the high-piled boxes like the shadow Bruce had named her for the night.

Then he started looking for the cargo loaded off the _Madeira Star_.

The building was the size of a couple of football fields, side by side, and aisles were marked out in white paint, along with numbers for each storage bay. Even in the faint streetlight spilling through the windows beneath the warehouse eaves, it was easy to see where you were going.

Not so easy to see the surveillance cams, but Nightwing already had the positions and movements of those memorised.

He touched Diana's arm a yard or two before she would have stepped into the line of sight of one of the swivelling cameras. She frowned briefly at him and he explained, "Security cameras."

There were times Nightwing could understand Batman's exasperation with the metas. Most of them never stopped to use their most important ability of all: the power to think, to reason, to deduce. They just went in, fists flying, powers blazing - they didn't plan ahead.

Maybe he should be glad of that. A meta that thought everything through before trying to take over the world? Heaven help them all.

Now, they would have ten seconds to get to the next aisle after that camera swept away from their current position, and before the next camera swept back to find them. He told Diana this, and at the correct interval, they slipped through the darkness and into the 'dead zone' aisle.

As they paused in the shadow of some cardboard boxes marked with the 'MATTEL' stamp, Diana spoke, softening her voice so it didn't project up to the echoing roofspace. "How do you know where the cameras are?"

His response was beneath his breath, almost too soft for his transceiver to pick up. "Came in here yesterday and today. Checked their positions."

She blinked. "They let you... Oh." Her realisation that he hadn't come as 'Nightwing' was one step towards getting her to think differently. Not, Dick reminded himself, that it was his job to get her to think differently. But it couldn't hurt.

"What made you suspect drug-smuggling in the first place?" Diana asked.

"Lucky coincidence," Nightwing said.

Two nights ago, while on patrol, he'd uncovered a meeting between gang of perps with known affiliations to drug syndicates. He'd taken out three, caught one, and the police had dealt with the last two. Not bad work, if he did say so himself.

About the same time, Babs had been running computer simulations for the GCPD when she noticed unusual activity in two drug-related hotspots in the city. On a hunch, she'd pulled up the incoming schedules of the shipping liners from the Gotham Port Authority and found a minor cargo ship whose first officer had been previously suspected of drug-smuggling, but never convicted.

Nightwing explained this, in simplified form, without mentioning Babs by name or her job.

Diana seemed astonished. "Batgirl is a hacker?"

"Yep." Dick made no apologies for his friend and colleague. "A good one, too." He looked up at the boxes he'd seen taken out of the container this afternoon. "These are it."

It was the work of moments to climb up the 'walls' of the narrow aisle between the boxes. Nightwing did it by planting his back against one side and his feet against the other and slowly inching his way up.

Diana practically walked up the sides of the boxes. Nightwing watched in envy and admitted that some parts of his job would be considerably easier if he was able to fly.

Not that he did all that badly with acrobatic agility and training. As Bruce had repeatedly shown, being human was no barrier to being a hero. At the top, he wedged himself between the two stacks and regarded the boxes before him.

He slid the pointed edge of a batarang along the taped edge of a box. The rasp of the tip against the cardboard sounded too loud in the pointed stillness of the warehous. Dust unfurled, and he brushed it away and braced himself against the urge to sneeze. Then they peered inside.

And stopped.

"You're sure this is the one?" Diana asked as she pulled out one of the objects with a rustle of plastic wrapper.

Children's toys. Plastic children's toys. They looked a lot like a Japanese animator's attempt at rendering a cross between Disney's 'Three Little Pigs' and Chucky the killer doll - which was to say that they had big eyes and were as ugly as hell.

Dick Grayson, board member of Wayne Enterprises and college senior in corporate business, looked at the toys and shuddered. This business venture would be some marketing manager's nightmare.

Nightwing merely frowned slightly and leaned out, checking the internal security cameras of the warehouse. "Are you able to lift this pallet up over onto the next pile?" He tapped the blue wooden pallet. "The security cameras only swivelled along a horizontal plane, assuming that anyone intending to break in would not be able to get past the ground-level security. This high up, they were safe from notice, and even the huge pallet block - if correctly handled - would not be noticed as it was moved away, then moved back.

An explosion filled the night outside, sending shockwaves across the dock complex and rattling the glass windows in their aluminium frames. They turned their heads, the flaming light splashing across their alarmed faces.

_Shit._

Swiftly, Nightwing keyed his comlink. "Batman?"

"Found anything yet?"

He schooled his expression against relief, in spite of the fact that his mentor couldn't see him. As much as he and Bruce argued and clashed, they were still...family.

"Where are you?"

"Next to Shed F, now get back-- " The communications broke off with a grunt, and Dick looked out across the yard.

The grunt could mean two things. Either it was no longer safe to talk, or Batman was no longer capable of talking. He hoped it was the first, but there was always the possibility of the second.

Conscious, there was nobody to match Batman. Unconscious...

"Can you manage this on your own?" Diana asked. She'd given up the appearance of clinging to the sides of the boxes and was fully hovering in the air ready to go and help Bruce out.

Thing was, Bruce didn't like being helped. Nightwing had fought it out with his mentor often enough to know that one of Batman's first rules was, '_I don't need help._' Even if he sometimes did.

Of course, Bruce's stubborn pride had never stopped any of his sidekicks from worrying about him.

"Yes," Nightwing said, making the decision in that instant. "Take the same route out, then keep to the rooftops and out of the line of sight of the security cameras - you saw them on the way in, didn't you?"

She nodded.

"Good. Check things out, if he needs help, give it." He hoped he wasn't coming across as bossy - she was a superhero in her own right, but this was Batman's city and, by adoptive extension, Nightwing's. "If he doesn't, come back. No, see how close you can get to the explosion, _then_ come back." Batman had trusted her stealth skills, Nightwing would do the same.

He opened his mouth to issue one last command, and saw the smile that twitched her lips.

"What?"

"The next thing out of your mouth was going to be 'no obvious flying.'"

Dick huffed, but couldn't deny it, and her smile flashed for a brilliant instant. "I promise to be good," she teased him, then dropped to the floor below. He watched as she moved on silent feet through the warehouse, a barely-seen shadow shifting through the night - just like the code-name Batman gave her earlier.

He was still curious about why she was on patrol with them. But if she didn't know, then Bruce hadn't told her; and if Bruce hadn't told her, there was no way he was going to tell Dick.

_Back to work, Dick._ He pulled out the batarang again, climbed down the narrow walls of the aisle to the boxes on the next pallet down. Behind him, the fire still flickered, making normal visuals difficult. He switched to night vision, fixed his mind on the matter at hand, and didn't think about any situations Bruce might be in.

Bruce wasn't alone, he had Diana going in to help him. Of course, he'd be mad as hell that he needed help - assuming he needed help, of course. But if Bruce _did_ need help Dick trusted Diana to provide it.

He set to work.

----


	3. Dance Like There's No Tomorrow 2

**Part One: Good Intentions**

**Dance Like There's No Tomorrow - 2**

The men were unwashed and rather the worse for wear. Their scars showed clearly over skin and face in the fluorescent lighting of the warehouse records room. One set of scars showed particular clearly in his line of vision - the ridges of fighting scars across the knuckles of the hand reaching for his cowl.

It didn't take the World's Greatest Detective to work out what was happening here. They planned to strip his cowl from him, to take the secrecy of his identity from him.

Over his dead body.

His plan was to bite the hand and work it from there. He nearly had the rope worked free of his wrists anyway - he just needed another minute. These guys might have caught him, but they were complete amateurs when it came to tying a prisoner up.

All he had to do was delay a minute.

The door slammed in as though an explosive force had punched through it. Not all that far from reality, Batman mused as he caught a glimpse of what lay beyond.

He'd given her a mask, told her to follow his lead, told her that there was to be no obvious flying.

On those three points at least, Batman couldn't fault her.

He couldn't fault her on her sense of timing, either.

She leaped in the door, sleek as a panther and just as deadly when on the hunt. The men assembled needed no order to, "Take her down!" They drew their guns, some faster than others, and snapped off shots point-blank at her.

Her black-gloved hands moved faster than the eye could follow, and there was the metallic sound of bullets hitting lycra-covered titanium, then the meaty sound of fist hitting flesh.

Batman seized the moment. Even bound as he was, there were still things he could do. It would take too long for him to work free of his bindings, but he had other means available to his end. They hadn't tied his feet for one - a stupid move.

He whirled around the chair he'd been sitting on, and kicked it into the knees of man who'd been about to strip his mask from him. As the man went down, yelping in pain, Batman slammed his boot into the heavy jaw.

Out like a light.

She'd taken out three and, as he watched, threw the fourth man into the fifth. Where her punches landed, men bent double. These men were amateurs when it came to fistfighting, they made their living in blood and guns, murder from a distance. They didn't know how to minimise the effect of her punches, or how to use stealth rather than force.

They certainly didn't know what to do when she ran up the wall and leaped for the sixth man, graceful as any acrobat, intent as any predator. The man, blond and unshaven, could only stare at her as her boot lashed out and caught him across the cheek, cracking his head to the side, poleaxing him where he stood.

Batman hoped she'd pulled her blows, just a little. The full force of a meta's strength was fatal for ordinary humans. And these men were more or less ordinary.

The seventh and eighth men were gaping - until he shoved one into the other, then stomped down on ankle and gun hands. They howled in chorus.

He felt someone grab him from behind, their fingers dragging on the ropes that bound him. On instinct, he turned, prepared to lash out, then stopped as the fingers gave one firm yank, and the hemp parted as though it were cotton thread.

He shed the ropes like brushing cobwebs from his arms. "I was nearly free, anyway."

Her mouth quirked a little. "The guards are on their way."

In a fluid move, he grabbed her arm and pushed her towards the doorway, then flipped out a gas pellet to ensure the men in the room remained somnolent until the police came. This hadn't been the original plan, but situations changed and plans had to follow suit.

Papers lying across the table were swept into his hands in a single, fluid movement. They contained information that might come in useful in tracking these men down, particularly since these men would shortly be arrested.

"Nightwing? We're out," he heard Diana murmur into her transceiver.

"Good. GCPD are on the way." Thankfully, the young man knew better than to ask questions at this point. And Batman would have words to say to his ward regarding Nightwing's line of investigation - as well as why he'd let Diana out of his sight.

_Later,_ he promised himself as he strode from the room, switching off the light and shutting the door. The gas was harmless enough, it would disorient the men, dissipating within minutes. It's presence was just long enough to ensure that these men would inhale at least one lungful of the gas and feel its full effects before the guards got here.

Outside, in the warehouse, she'd paused at an intersection. As he moved towards her on silent feet, he saw the sweeping beam of a guard's torchlight coming along the intersecting aisle.

He looked upwards at the girder overhead and reached for a grapple. The next moment she gave him a wary look, and slipped one arm beneath his cloak and around his shoulders. He felt the breath from her lips whisper past his jaw, doing unexpected things to his stomach. "Hold on." The next moment, they'd risen up to hover among the steel girders of the warehouse roof.

To help her retain her grip on him - not an easy thing, since his gear was made to be difficult to grab - he put one gauntleted hand on her shoulder, evening out their balance. The pose resembled their positions earlier in the evening, during the Charity Ball, albeit reversed. The delicate shell of her eyelid flickered a bare inch from his mouth; he could feel the warmth of her skin against his jaw although they weren't touching.

Their feet touched the main girder, just as the guard opened the records room and found the men who'd been meeting there tonight. Men without ID tags, who weren't employees of the shipping firm, and of questionable origin.

Men whom Batman had intended to set free, but only after visually tagging them so they could track them down to their masters. That was no longer an option.

Within moments, the warehouse was swarming with guards, and in minutes, the Gotham police had arrived to take the men into custody.

Amidst all the noise and sirens, nobody noticed two shadows slipping out one of the high windows and crossing the roofs of the warehouse.

It wasn't until they were several buildings away from the Gotham Port Authority that they paused to take stock of their situation. By then, he'd shuffled the papers into some semblance of order and stashed them away in a pocket in his cloak.

She stood on the ledge of the building, poised like a statue at the corner. The wind teased the edge of her braid, but she was otherwise still, a perfect statue of a beautiful woman. In such a way had Galatea stared blindly out into the world until the gods had breathed life and heart and soul into her; much as they had breathed life and heart and soul into Diana and set her loose on the world.

"You were supposed to stay with Nightwing." The words were harsher than he'd intended them to be, but she didn't flinch.

Her head turned a little - enough so she could see him out of her peripheral vision. "You weren't supposed to get caught by the people you were stalking," she replied. Her voice had none of the accusation he'd just levelled at her, but his pride was stung.

He turned away from her, looking back out over the Port Authority building and the warehouses that lined the docks. "Nightwing, report." It wasn't a question.

"Two blocks south of the docks, Batman. What was the idea with the explosion?"

"It wasn't mine," Batman told him. "Although I didn't see whose it was."

"You mean there was someone _else_ in the yards tonight, as well as the drug perps and us?"

"It's possible it was them," he replied. "They were situated at the other end of the warehouse blocks."

"Well, my warehouse was crawling with guards within minutes of the explosion," Nightwing reported, "So as diversionary tactic? Failed miserably." There was a soft grunt from Dick, "Did we leave anyone to finger?"

"No." That had been their primary objective when they arrived at the yards; pick up the perps who looked to be in on this deal, tag them, and follow them.

"Well, there goes the night," the younger man said, a little pissed off.

"We learned some things," Batman chided his protégé.

Nightwing snorted. "Like what?"

"Like the Port Authority moved extremely fast to check out all the warehouses when the incendiary device went off at the other end of the yard. That's unusual for them."

"Ooh! A Clue?" Nightwing asked, feigning excitement.

Batman reminded himself that now was not the time to chew out his ward for sarcasm, tempting as the thought was. "Possibly. Continue on patrol through the south side of the city. Keep an eye out for anything drug-related and take notes."

"There'll be an exam later?" Nightwing sighed, theatrically. Dick, it seemed, had taken Diana's presence on patrol as an excuse to grandstand. "And I thought college was bad."

Diana gave a soft, huffing laugh from behind him. Batman didn't turn. "Transmit your data to the Batcomputer at the end of the night."

"Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full, sir." Trust Nightwing to make a joke of it. Trust Nightwing to make a joke of everything.

Then he heard her speak, both with her ears and through the commlink. "Happy hunting, Nightwing," she said, her voice rich with amusement. When he turned, he could see the corner of her smile beneath the mask.

"Have fun with him, Shadow. And remember, if he's a grumpy old fart, it's because you're ruining his image of the big, dark, Lone Bat Ranger!"

"Nightwing..." He was going to have a long talk with the young man about personal comments over the comms system. Yes, it was encrypted, but you never knew who was listening in.

"Going, gone." Dick didn't sound at all apologetic. "Nightwing, out."

Batman deactivated the channel for Nightwing's transceiver. If the young man needed to call for backup, then he'd call them on the emergency channel. In the meantime...

In the meantime, she was still looking out over the city, watching the patterns of the night. "Why did you ask me to join you in patrol?"

The question came apropos of nothing and yet was apropos of everything. He didn't answer it.

"Why didn't you stay with Nightwing?"

"You were injured."

"I'd have managed."

"It's not a crime to give help."

"That depends on whom you're helping."

"Batman," she said, and he could almost hear his name behind the appellation, "Why did you invite me to join you in Gotham if you weren't going to accept help from me?"

He let the question hang in the air between them, and a flicker of movement across the street caught his eye.

They were reflected in the mirrored windows of the high-rise office building opposite them, two tall figures, separated by a mere five yards, both masked and clad in the colours of the night. His cape rippled around him in the windy night, the movement he'd seen reflected by the glass.

They made a dramatic picture. They always did.

He looked back at her, at the proud stance of her, chin lifted, eyes challenging, and changed the topic. "Are you ready to go?"

Even beneath the mask it was easy to spot her exasperation, but she restrained it. "If you wish," she said.

A slight smile touched his lips, and he ran to the edge and leaped from the building, tossing a grapple into the darkness, putting his trust in the strength of the cable and the accuracy of his throw.

There was a freedom in the swing, in the cold instancy of the moments he leapt from building to building. Metas had their powers, but, without those abilities, they would never dream of such a course of action. Again, the grapple arced out, and hit with a _thud!_ Again, he held the end and took his chances, leaping into freefall, trusting in the strength of the line to keep him aloft, trusting in his mental calculations of wind and velocity to see him to the next building.

In an unguarded moment, Clark had once made the comment that all the Waynes had died in that alley twenty years ago. Batman didn't entirely disagree. Most of the time, he merely existed.

But moments like these, he _lived_.

He didn't look behind to see if she was keeping pace with him; if she chose, it would be easy for her to fly ahead and wait for him to catch up. She didn't choose, and he didn't look.

In a matter of minutes they were across the broad city, and on patrol.

They dispatched a couple of petty thieves, caught two muggers, landed in the middle of a gang war and disabled half the participants before the police arrived, and caught an employee as he ransacked his boss' office.

More correctly, they scared the living daylights out of him, by suddenly appearing at the window of the office where the man was tearing through files and folders as though his life depended on it. A quick transmission to the security firm, and the man was arrested, nearly wetting his pants along the way. A disgruntled employee, or so Batman gathered.

She kept up with him, followed his lead, and effortlessly dropped into the task of patrolling the city that bred crime.

It was nearly three o'clock when the news came over the police scanner that a man was holding hostage the employees and patrons of one of Gotham's better-known strip clubs.

"He walked into the club as a patron," Batman told her as they alighted on the roof of the building opposite the club. The flashing lights of the police cars below only added to the garish neon signs in the brick and concrete street. "The place is frequented by middle-to-upper class businessmen - quite a number of whom were in the club when the man locked the doors in, pulled a gun and began his threats." He frowned. "Most clubs of this nature have a place where you check your weapons before you enter. Security guards enforce that."

"Perhaps he had it concealed."

"Unlikely. Metal detectors have become very common in the last few years."

"That's a lot of security for..." She hesitated, as though trying to find a tactful way of describing the club.

"...a quasi-legal business?" Batman smiled grimly. "The people who run these places make lots of money in a variety of enterprises. They can afford little things like metal detectors and good security."

She nodded, looking down at the scene below, her head tilted a little as voices blew up to them faint on the gusty winds. "They've cleared out the building, but the guy has locked the doors of one of the rooms from the inside and done something to them so they can't get in."

"Who's down there, among the police officers?"

Diana listened. "Stretton, Bugden, Everett-Millar, Pearce, Bullock..."

Bullock was one option. Not the friendliest, though. Still, allies were allies... "Commissioner Gordon isn't there?"

"Not that I've heard mentioned." She tilted her head at him, "Are we going in?"

"Yes." He caught her arm as she began to stand. "Wait. I deal with the perp. You get the people out."

He couldn't see most of her face, but he could sense that she'd just arched an eyebrow at him. "I'm stronger."

"It's my city." Would she understan and let it go, or would she argue the point? Yes, she could probably catch this guy with a minimum of effort, but it wasn't as clear-cut as 'wham, bam, thank-you ma'am.' This was Batman's city, and Batman protected it.

She wasn't happy with the answer, but she accepted his right to take down the perp. Thankfully.

"You wouldn't happen to know the inside layout of the club?"

He allowed himself the slightest of smirks. As it happened, Bruce Wayne had been here once before among a group of businessmen. He'd fondled enough girls to maintain his reputation, but escaped when Batgirl called him out for a major heist, under the guise of a pissed-off, stood-up date. Barbara did a frighteningly good drama queen impersonation.

"Main club area is second floor. Stage area is opposite the entrance to the room, there's no ceiling. There's a backstage area, probably behind and to the left of the stage as you're facing it from the audience. Lighting's low, there are lots of tables and chairs, one fire-exit to the back right, the main doors into the club, and at least one backstage exit area." He ran through the layout of the building again, and frowned. "There are probably offices and electrical switch rooms behind the club. The ceiling is non-existant - just the metal frames that the lights are in, and the odd panel to hide some of the more messy wiring."

She stared at the brick walls of the building, as if she could somehow develop X-ray vision and see what was inside. "How many times have you been here?" The question was rich, amused.

"Just once."

Her mouth curved and she shook her head, ruefully. "So how do we get in?"

"There's an entrance through the air-conditioning system," Batman pointed at the large vents at the top of the building. "The club is on the second level - just follow the noise."

Profile became portrait as she looked at him. "How are you getting in?"

He pulled another grapple from his belt. "How do you think?"

Another smile touched her lips, and she stepped up to the low brick wall surrounding the roof and leaped. To an onlooker who didn't know she was capable of flight, it would have looked as though she'd simply jumped from one building to the other.

Batman watched as she ran along the roof to the huge aluminium vents on the roof where the air-conditioning system churned out the fetid air from inside. A moment later, she had pulled away the vent facing, and slipped inside the shaft, vanishing from sight.

He flung out the grapple and leaped out after it, calculating his trajectory for an open window. It was a narrow fit, but an easy one for him.

The room inside was empty, although the slightly musky scent of the place left him in no doubt about its usual purpose. Evidently, this strip club provided the opportunity for more 'hands on' enjoyment of their employees than just a pat on the bottom during an exotic dance.

He recalled to mind the interior of the downstairs club; the assessing gazes he'd given the place under the guise of enjoying the girls who wriggled themselves across his lap.

The main strip club hall was at least two floors high, maybe three. The stage walk was raised off the ground, with the tables for the patrons below so they could enjoy the view. However, Bruce had noticed mirror windows along the top, back edge of the hall - surveillance rooms.

He had little doubt that the people in them had cleared out once it became clear that this guy was taking hostages, so he broke into the first one without remorse.

It had no view of the club floor.

However, the one next door to it did.

Below, like some garish circus, a man in black jeans and a t-shirt held a gun to the head of a scantily-clad girl on the stage. She wobbled on her high heels, barely able to stand upright, and her makeup had run with the tears that streaked her face. He was in his mid-thirties, clean-cut and would have been reasonably good-looking had his face not been convulsed in an expression of twisted rage.

_He looks like Mordred._ A moment later, Batman realised it was only the expression that resembled the power-mad child: bitterness at being thwarted of what he desired, and the triumphant knowledge that he held the trump cards firmly in his hands.

Other details caught his attention: the extra silver bar jammed across the main entrance, locking the doors shut, the closed doors leading backstage, and the slender gloved fingers that were slipping through the grille of the huge air pipe running over to one side of the room.

"_Shadow?_"

"_Ready._"

To the people in the club hall, everything happened at once.

Overhead, glass shattered as something crashed through the mirror windows of the offices above. The gun went off, and blood spattered across the audience to the accompaniment of shrieks and screams. The girl collapsed and her body tumbled off the stage - possibly into someone's lap from the horrified yelps in that direction. The gunman was yelling something that nobody could hear amidst the cacophony, swinging his gun around wildly.

Most of the hostages covered their eyes, afraid to watch their death unfold.

Those who watched saw the man swoop in and drop onto the stage, light as a feather. "_Like an avenging angel of fury,_" one of the girls said to the police afterwards.

Batman crouched in the middle of the floor, and slowly rose to his full height.

Flash had once jokingly accused him of posing when he made an entrance. In truth, most of the time it was pure serendipity and had nothing to do with posing. Most of the time.

As a rule, Batman didn't go in for showmanship or dramatics; he wanted the fastest route to the cleanest ending. And if he could get away with using intimidation instead of force, why not? The advantage was small but useful, such as in this case - if the 'oh' of astonishment on the face of the perp was any indication.

The man was no longer so perfectly assured of his dominion here. The uncertainty was usually brief and swiftly overcome by bravado, but that first moment of doubt seeped into the soul the way the damp from the autumn rains seeped into the Batcave.

The man retrieved his bluster almost immediately, and looked Batman up and down. Contempt distorted his expression as he sneered, "So the legendary Bat comes to protect his territory?" He fingered his gun, clenching and unclenching the muscles of his hand around it.

"You should know better than to come to Gotham," he said. It was all the request and warning he was going to give this man. No second chances.

On the other side of the gunman, Diana's black-clad form threaded through the shadows. Her passing went unnoticed by most of the people in the room, too caught up in watching the confrontation between Batman and the perp.

"Fuck that," the gunman spat, and lifted his arm to fire.

The bullet sped through empty air; the instant he'd seen the arm come up, Batman had ducked and rolled. His armour would protect him against the bullet, but the damn things still hurt like hell. Even as he came into a crouch, a batarang was spinning between them, knocking the muzzle of the gun upwards. Another batarang - this one with razor sharp edges - sliced through the tendon and muscle of the hand, rendering it unable to grip the gun, let alone fire.

Enraged by pain, the man spun on the balls of his feet, falling into a crouch that matched Batman's own. It seemed this man knew streetfighting.

Batman knew a lot more styles than just streetfighting.

He watched the way the man moved, his reach, his flexibility. Superiority in a fight was as much to do with exploiting the weaknesses of your opponent as it was about being stronger, if not more. Brute force was for those who didn't know the Achilles' heels of the human body.

The man lunged for him, and Batman dodged it easily, tripping up the man as he went by. However, instead of sprawling, the man fell into a controlled tumble, neat as anything Nightwing had ever done. Then he spun on light feet and snap-kicked at Batman's knee.

_Interesting._ Not just your average thug, then. A little training - enough to take him just out of 'amateur' status. Nothing compared to Batman's training, but it always helped to be careful, amateurs were most dangerous for their unpredictability.

"This your city, Batman?" The perp taunted as he tried to strike again. "Was that your girl I just shot?" The innuendo fell far short of hitting the mark the way he'd intended. "Don't worry, she's still warm if you don't mind them quiet."

His lip curled in revulsion, and the perp saw it. He leered. "Like 'em with a bit more liveliness, eh?"

The sound of solid metal against solid metal drew the guy's attention to the main entrance, where a black clad figure yanked the metal handles from the door. Outrage formed across the handsome face - a split second distraction that was more than enough to give Batman the opening he wanted. He took the perp down, hard.

The man didn't know what hit him. It was, in fact, just a right feint, a left hook, and a sweeping kick to lay him out. Minimal resistance, maximum effect; Batman could have done it in his sleep. One gunman, bagged, tagged, and hog-tied within moments.

And all without breaking a sweat.

An almighty crash heralded the opening doors, and light - white light instead of the garish, coloured lighting of the main strip club - poured into the room, bringing with it the armed police officers of the GCPD.

"Everybody, freeze!"

Batman ignored the order, trusting that these men knew his outline well enough not to interfere. Instead, he leaped down to the floor, to the bared area around the dead girl, and he knelt down beside her, checking for a pulse. The head wound had not been fatal, but she'd bled out in the darkness of the floor, one more life claimed by a man with a gun. Her eyes were still open, half-slits in her head, as though closing them had been too much effort while she lay dying.

In just such a way had Thomas and Martha Wayne died. In just such a way had the Batman been born.

And every time it happened again, he was reborn anew.

The hand in his gauntlet clenched into a fist, and he felt the rising temptation to leap back on the stage and beat the living daylights out of the man he'd taken and tied. For a moment he trembled, on the edge of madness, and then the shadows moved, coalesced into human form.

"Did she choose this life?" The question held no judgement, merely curiosity and a kind of pity. For all her years in Man's World, there were things of which the Princess had no knowledge.

"Does it matter if she did?" His answer was harsher than he liked, but he unclenched his fist slowly. Her eyes flickered towards the movement of his fingers and he saw her understanding of what had been going through his mind.

"You did well," she murmured, a small consolation in the night.

"I couldn't save her."

"I never said you should have been able to." The words were sharp, and it was a measure of his state of mind that he almost flinched at them. Then she glanced up beyond and behind him, and as his head turned to see what had caught her notice, only the periphery of his vision saw her moving backwards into the darkness, as though she, not he, was the furtive creature of the night.

"Good job," Detective Harvey Bullock said as he came up beside him and looked at the bloody mess that was all that remained of the girl. "Ugh. Gunshot wound to the head. About as messy as they come." He regarded Batman with an arched brow. "I guess you won't be staying around to make a statement?"

"No."

"Who's your associate?"

Batman regarded the heavily-built Bullock with a narrow-eyed gaze. "An associate."

"Bit leery of the cops," Bullock observed. "Although," he added, somewhat hastily, "I know there are days when I'm leery of the cops!" He sighed as he glanced down at the girl. "Damn shame. I hate filling out the paperwork on these things..."

The cop turned to call someone over to get the medics in, and Batman took the opportunity to escape, vanishing into the darkness behind the stage like so much smoke and mist. Bullock was a cop for whom the descriptive terms would never be 'good' or 'honest' but he got the job done and Batman respected him. Bullock did good work, using some questionable methods.

_And who does that remind you of?_

He passed through halls earlier emptied by the gunman, and was nearly at the stage exit when the bathroom door just beside it opened, and one of the women stepped out. Peroxide blonde, large dark eyes, black leather jacket, hot pink push-up bra, black leather miniskirt and knee-high black boots, she took one look at him from toe to head and grinned. "Hot damn!"

Accustomed to such remarks, he pushed the doors open, then felt something touch his arm. Against the black of his gauntlets, the hot pink of her nails - matching the colour of her bra - fluoresced in neon brightness. "Thanks for the rescue, big guy." Her voice was alto and husky. "You came too late for Em, but thanks on behalf of the rest of us." The appreciation was blunt and straightforward.

So too was the offer. "Next time you're in this part of town, look me up. Anything you want, any way you want it." Her eyes flickered over his chest, his abdomen, his groin, and she made a little grinding movement, drawing attention to her 'assets.' "I'll give you the ride of your life." One hazel eye winked at him, before she turned on her heel and headed back the way she came, only giving him backwards glance over her shoulder before she went back into the club proper.

Batman didn't quite shake his head. Not the first time he'd been propositioned on the job, and probably not the last. He ignored the offer, as he did all of them, strode out of the building, and began the ascent to the roof of the club.

The wind wrestled with him, tugging at his cloak like a demon at his back, like the anger he channelled into his work.

His comlink beeped. "_Not going to take her up on her offer?_" Damn. She'd heard him being propositioned. Worse; she found it funny, the indulgent lilt in her voice giving away her amusement.

Another man would have flushed with embarrassment, discomfort, remorse, or various combinations of all three. Batman ignored her remark, and tried to stifle a Wayne-esque desire to make a snappy comeback. He settled for a dry reproof. "You made a very clean getaway back there," he said. "Where are you?"

"_Over on the Gotham City Bank_." He turned and saw her, high and distant in the skies, the oval of her face pale against the night. "_Where are we going next?_"

"Back to the cave" he responded as he reached the rooftop. He paused to voiceprint a set of co-ordinates, then fired off a grapple and swung through the cold pre-dawn air. The sky to the east held the slightly expectant shade that portended the night's end.

One more night fighting.

One more killer behind bars.

One more night battling the criminals of the city.

One more night battling the demons of his mind.

He landed on the roof beside Diana, walked past her to the other side of the roof, and swung off the building into the alleyway below where he'd called the Batmobile. He landed beside the car and waited for her to touch down in the alley. A thumb of a remote, and the door sprang open. "Your chariot awaits."

It was only once she was settled inside that she arched a brow at him. "That was a joke!"

"You're very observant," he mocked as he put them into gear. "I make them occasionally."

"I'd never have guessed," she said, matching his dry tone of voice as they sped through the near-empty streets of Gotham. In the background, the the police channels continued to bleep and hiss their customary static, filling the confined space of the Batmobile's interior with white noise. "Why did you ask me to come patrolling with you, Bruce?"

He took his gaze briefly off the road, to linger on the lines of her face. "I wanted you to see my city."

"You wanted me to see what you do for your city," she corrected, and he couldn't deny it.

"That, too."

There was a peculiar regret simmering inside him, an ache that grew out of a part of himself that he didn't like to admit existed. He'd wanted her to see what he did when he wasn't with the Justice League, to understand just a fragment of what had made him into Batman; to understand why he didn't dare let himself get any closer to her than she already was.

As if sensing that he didn't wish for this confrontation now, she didn't say anything more. They drove in silence the rest of the way to the Batcave, the total noise within the vehicle consisting of the thrum of the engine and the occasional report from the police scanner.

As they raced through the trees and scrub up the trail to the Batcave, he activated the anti-tracking devices that prevented anyone from tracing their route in towards Wayne Manor. A moment later, the Batcave entrance responded to his signal, and yawned deep in the side of the cliff. They sped into the gaping maw of that hole, swallowed up by the darkness.

It wasn't until the car slid into the turntable and the turntable rose up to the level of the Batcave, that she spoke. "The girl's death affected you personally."

Her statement brought back a flood of memory and sensation: the scent of blood, the tang of it through his nose, revolting him, the flesh of the dead girl, warm but flaccid, losing heat to the cold of the night.

Once again, anger coursed through him and he tamped it down, fed it into the pool of rage and fury that was the source of all his determination and drive. At the docks, he'd fought the men with calm control. His actions had been spare and necessary; he performed them, but he didn't _feel_ them.

In the club, the lines had been blurred; blurred by the taint of the Batman's own birth - of Bruce Wayne's past that had given rise to Batman. His blows against the gunman had held that edge of righteous anger made personal by his own history. His rage as he looked down at the dead girl had been fuelled by the memory of his own parents lying dead in an alleyway, beyond help.

His hands closed into fists as he crossed the Batcave and went up to the computer banks.

"You can't save them all, Bruce."

Her compassion stung, salt in the wounds of his past. "I can try," he said harshly. That was why he worked alone, why he lived alone. No questions, no demands, nobody to tell him what he should and should not try in the pursuit of vengeance.

A lonely life, yes, but a satisfying one, too.

Diana's voice cut through his thoughts, through the barriers he was erecting against her, even as he sat down and began scanning through the information Nightwing had downloaded to the computer an hour ago. "Trying doesn't mean you have to beat yourself up when you fail." Her words were quiet, but they sliced through his defenses like a hot knife through butter.

"And if I don't, who will?" The words grated out from him, harsh and brutal.

"Nobody," she replied, and there was the hint of anger in her voice. "Nobody would ever chide you for failing when you're out there every night." She paused beneath one of the droplights of the cave, and her reflection shimmered in the glass of the computer screen, obscuring the blinking green text of Nightwing's report. "Only you insist on bearing a burden too heavy for one man to carry. Only you insist on taking the blame where none falls upon you."

Her words rung fierce in the stillness of the cave, and he turned from the terminal to look at her. Even in the figure-hugging black of her outfit, the light lingered over her, resting lovingly on the features of her face revealed by the mask she'd just pulled from her head and now held in her hands.

In a way, it hurt that she cared about him. Because Alfred, Leslie and Dick and the others were family, and nobody could stop Clark from caring about the whole damned world, but he shrank back from the idea that she might have an interest in him beyond the realm of their work.

Batman stood, drawing her attention. He pushed his cowl back, and saw the fractional widening of her eyes as he revealed his face. It was plain she hadn't expected such honesty from him.

"I wanted to kill him." He wasn't sure he'd expected such honesty from himself either. Still, he'd tried everything else to push her away; subterfuge, masks, reason - maybe the plain truth would work where nothing else had.

"You didn't."

"It would have been easy to do," he said, holding her gaze. Every nerve in him screamed to look away, to look down, but he met the searching look she gave him. "Hit his jaw a little harder, a little further back; break his neck or put enough pressure on his windpipe to crush it; stop his heart with a jab..."

"You could do it easily enough," she said, acknowledging his proficiency in combat. "But you would not." She stated it as matter-of-factly as she had spoken of his competence, a certainty in his nature that even he didn't have and never would.

"I could."

"You don't."

"Do you know why?"

"Because you choose not to," she said, simply.

Her world was simple, black and white. His was coloured in less absolute shades. "It's all a matter of control, Princess. _My_ control."

The crimson bow of her lips tilted up at one corner, "Flash calls you a control freak."

"Flash would." Batman continued to search her face, looking for the understanding he needed of their situation. "Princess, I meant what I said at the Museum of Natural History. It would never work between us."

"It would never work?" Diana questioned, eyes flashing, "Or it might work but for your fear what might happen if you lost control of even one area of your life?"

Her forthright ways were one of her more endearing traits, even when he didn't wish for her candour. "Control is important, Diana."

"The control you exercise to avoid killing them is not that which you would lose with me," she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, and his mouth quirked at her bluntness. "Gotham needs the Batman - and the Batman needs Gotham," she told him. "I wouldn't try to take you from your city, Bruce."

"You would, in the end," he said. There was no hint of his own regrets in his voice; of the two of them, he had to stand firm.

"Only if you let..." Her words trailed off into silence as she looked at him sharply, understanding finally coursing across her face. "And that is why you won't."

It was not his strengths that he feared, but his weaknesses. Some he could overcome through learning, training, and endless practise, and some would be weaknesses until the day he died.

Diana was a weakness against which he had no defence.

He wished he didn't have to do this to her, to them. "Yes."

The word bounced off the high arches of the cave, reverberating among the exhibits. Was it possible that an affirmative answer could sound so harsh?

Batman watched her as she battled with the desire to argue her point. He saw the moment when she lost. Not for the first time, he regretted what his vendetta had cost him. He regretted it all the more when the reminder stood before him in her form. She was beautiful, with a beauty that went far deeper than the physical; with a purity of nature and mission that shone through in her eyes in her actions, in her friendship, freely given.

Yes, he had...cared for her longer than she knew. He suspected he'd cared longer than even he knew. But he couldn't afford such emotion in his line of work.

Someone needed to stand back from the League, to act as counterbalance and weight. Someone needed to lurk in the shadows and take the darker road, because the criminals who preyed on the common people belonged to the night. Someone had to hold the bridge, however lonely it became.

And someone had to do it alone.

That someone had to be him.

He wondered what she was thinking as she looked away, out over the darkened cave. Her expression was thoughtful. "You couldn't have told me this?"

_I tried. _"Would you have believed me?"

She opened her mouth, hesitated, then shook her head. "No, I wouldn't."

Time stretched out, seconds easing delicately over the too-wide chasm between them. And, at last, she spoke. "Thank you for letting me see your city, Bruce." The phrase sounded formal, almost stilted, and they both felt it.

"Diana--"

She regarded him, gently. "This won't affect our work together in the League, Bruce."

"That wasn't what I wanted to say."

Her surprise was palpable. "Then what?"

He let himself be caught in her eyes, trapped in the frank stare, and forced the words past his lips: "I'm sorry."

It went against his grain to apologise - another of the things he didn't do very well, and her astonishment was plain enough, but her expression was rueful as she said, "So am I."

She began to step away before she halted, and turned back. Two quick steps towards him, and she was in his personal space - a space that very few entered while he was in the guise of the Bat. She lifted her face to brush her lips past his cheek, and her nose caressed his cheekbone as her mouth touched his skin.

He wanted nothing more than to turn his head those few degrees and capture her lips in his. Control trembled, crumbled, and there was a moment when he could feel her mouth, moving under his as she'd kissed him in the Indian restaurant. The sweet, soft, cool taste of her lingered in his memory and on his lips, and desire shifted sluggishly in his veins. His hands twitched and moved...

Diana stepped back before he reached for her, his treacherous body seeking what his choice had coolly denied him. His hands dropped to his sides, the movement slight but telling. It was better this way. Without her so close, perhaps he could tame his memory to his will.

Perhaps.

His hands clenched in their gauntlets as she took another step back, holding his gaze with a faint smile before she turned and leaped into the air, leaving him standing in the Batcave, alone.

Always alone.

----


	4. Fight Like The Odds Aren't Against You 1

**Book One: Good Intentions**

**-- Fight As Though The Odds Aren't Against You --**

**(1)**

The first thing Clark noticed as he stepped off the Watchtower transporter pad was the sound of the ventilation systems. That was usually the case.

What was a faint whirr in the background of human hearing could be as loud as the roar of a tornado's hurtling winds if Clark let it. He didn't.

At this time of the night - around midnight, Pacific Standard Time - the primary sounds of the Watchtower were the ventilation systems, the ever-humming computer banks, and the occasional tap-tap-tapping of someone doing research about whatever situation they were currently looking at in their territory.

He tipped a salute at the monitoring camera of the transporter pad, letting Captain Atom know Clark was glad of the ride at this time of night. Ordinarily, Clark would have finished his sweep of Metropolis, gone for a quick fly through several of the northwestern states, checking for trouble, and gone back to his apartment for a handful of hours of sleep before rising to go to work at the Daily Planet.

Today's earlier battle had changed his priorities slightly.

Supergirl had claimed she heard Wonder Woman's bones crack as the creature slammed Diana to the pavement. Superman wouldn't have gone quite so far; but he'd heard her slam into the ground and the small gasp she gave before unconsciousness claimed her.

It took something horribly strong to put Diana out for the count, and the once-over check he'd given her battered body after they'd defeated the monster had done nothing to alleviate his concerns. Three cracked ribs, one broken rib, one broken collarbone, a cracked tibia, and an assortment of burns and bruises was _not_ the usual complement of injury for Wonder Woman.

According to Batman, it was amazing that nobody else had ended up injured or dead. As it was, half the League had worked together to take the creature out. Diana had just been the first unfortunate to encounter it and lead it away from the bystanders who'd gawked as it pulled itself from the smoking lip of Mount St Helens.

He passed through the hall where the League had anxiously gathered to hear the status of their downed members, through the now-silent corridors of the Watchtower, through the corridor in which four of the charter members of the Justice League had waited for the fifth to bring news of the sixth, and into the infirmary.

Other members of the League had come here to be patched up at the end of the confrontation. Most had suffered mild burns or a few bruises. Diana had been the one to take the brunt of the creature's solo attack before her teammates came to help her.

Now, it stood quiet and empty.

_Nearly_ empty.

The man who stood beside Diana's bed looked up as Clark came to stand by the side of the hospital bed, but he gave no other sign of greeting. Clark glanced briefly at the gauntlet that rested on the sheet beside Diana's bandaged one, but said nothing as he turned his gaze to Diana.

She lay on her back, the covers neatly folded over her, hands by her side. Her hair splayed oddly across the cotton of the pillowcase; chunks had been seared and singed by the monster as it tackled her and the fine black strands had twisted in and around on themselves in the heat.

Otherwise, to the human eye, her condition looked horrific. Bandages hid the worst of the burns and bruises, but the raw edges seeped out beneath the cream gauze. For a moment, Clark fancied that the injuries _wanted_ to be seen, that they were pushing beyond the boundaries of the dressing to flaunt themselves against Diana's skin.

They'd never seen her like this before.

A quick scan of her body showed her to be healing well. While a human would take months to recover from the injuries she'd gained, it would take her no more than a matter of weeks. In less than a month, Clark judged, the scabs would be healed, the scars would have vanished, and the bones would be knitted back together as densely and powerfully as they'd been before.

At least she was sleeping.

_J'onn?_ He made the telepathic call a soft one, hoping not to disturb his friend in another activity.

_She awoke earlier,_ the Martian responded, as smoothly as though he'd been waiting for Clark's arrival. _It was brief, and she asked after everyone else._

Which was typical of Diana, Clark thought, wryly. _She seemed fine when you spoke?_

_Tired,_ J'onn noted, _But yes, she was coherent and well in spirit if not in body. Her injuries pain and frustrate her - and will for some time yet. It will be a difficult thing for her to stand back and watch._

There was a pause, and then Clark 'heard' a new voice enter the conversation as Batman's joined them in mental speech.

_You don't usually come back to the Watchtower at night._ Was there an accusation in Bruce's voice or was that just his imagination? Clark wasn't sure. The next question, however, was loaded. _I guess it was a quiet night in Metropolis, then?_

He didn't hide his response, the frown that marred his forehead, the slight tensing of his shoulders. Batman would be cataloguing his reaction, coldly and inhumanly; and yet Bruce's presence here was no less of an oddity than Clark's.

_You don't usually come back here after Gotham patrols,_ Clark replied, keeping his mental voice level. If Clark had little reason to return to see Diana, how much less reason did Bruce have, obsessive as he was about the city he'd made his own?

The broad, dark shoulders rose in the faintest of shrugs, _I sent Batgirl and Robin out with Nightwing tonight. They know how to call me if things get tight. And I had the information from this afternoon's battle to process._ On the surface, it was a reasonable statement. Nobody could process information like Bruce - not in the League and not on Earth.

But there was something in the careful neutrality of Batman's stance that caught Clark's attention. It was nothing he could have pointed to as proof, just a feeling, a notion.

He sent himself a mental memo to review any and all instances where Batman and Wonder Woman had recently worked together. As the putative leader of the League, and as their friend, it was incumbent on him to keep a wary and watchful eye on any personal developments in that area.

Of course, he said none of this to Batman, and J'onn's link was set up so that they could only 'hear' each other's mental voice, not sense each other's thoughts. Just as well - the prospect of seeing into the mind of the Bat was not something Clark cared to consider. He respected Bruce, he just wouldn't want to _be_ him.

_Did you find anything?_

_Lots of things,_ Batman replied. Silence. It seemed that was all the information Bruce was going to reveal.

Clark rolled his eyes, but didn't press any further. He didn't like the other man's secretive behaviour but it wasn't currently worth the effort to pry. Instead, Clark lifted his head to a 'listening' pose as he spoke to J'onn. _Thank you for passing on the information about Diana. I hope I didn't interrupt anything important?_

_At this hour of the day there is little to occupy me. _A touch of J'onn's amusement washed over him, _Only the early morning informercial feed._

_Those programs rot your brains, you know,_ Clark teased.

_I am sure they do,_ the Martian replied evenly. _However, are you aware that I could develop 'Fab Abs' in less than sixty days by using the 'Fab-Ab-ulator' for only thirty minutes every day?_ Clark failed to hold in a broad grin. There was something inherently hilarious about the Martian talking about '_The Fab-Ab-ulator_' as solemnly as though he were informing Clark of the most recent crisis requiring their attention.

Judging by the faint half-smirk touching Bruce's mouth, J'onn was including him in the conversation. Over the years of association with Batman, Clark had learned that a lot of expression could be fitted into a mere quirk of the lips.

_As a shapeshifter, you could have 'fab abs' in considerably less time than sixty days,_ Batman remarked.

_True. However, the satisfaction gained from such exercise has yet to be considered._ J'onn's mental voice had a 'twinkle' to it. _And the patient is awake,_ he noted, the 'smile' in his voice continuing as both men's heads whipped around to start at the now-awake and conscious woman in the infirmary bed.

"If you gentlemen are finished holding a conversation over my head?" She spoke huskily, her voice rough, like sandpaper or a cat's tongue.

_We apologise for the impudence, Diana,_ J'onn said smoothly. _We did not wish to wake you._

"And yet you did," she smiled, glancing up at the ceiling.

"Sorry," Clark said, impulsively reaching out to slip his fingers into her bandaged hand. The smile blossomed further, a beauty of spirit that all the bandages in the world couldn't hide, and the fingers in his turned enough to grip his hand slightly.

"We didn't know you were awake," Bruce said, retaining his gravelly tone of voice, and she turned to look at him, before her eyes flickered across the room to the timepiece that hung on the wall.

"You're not in Gotham." It was as much a question as a statement, and yet Clark sensed there was something else behind it. Diana was suddenly detached, reserved. Then she paused and turned back to Clark, surprised. "And you should be in Metropolis. Or at home."

"Good observation skills, Princess," Batman said dryly, apparently unheeding of her concern. "I left Gotham to Batgirl and Robin tonight." When she arched a brow, he qualified it. "I had some research to do."

"On?"

Clark wondered if they'd notice if he walked out and left them, not touching, just watching each other. The setting was hardly romantic, but the intensity between them was palpable.

_They would notice,_ J'onn said gently.

"There aren't too many creatures that can injure you like that." Batman was answering her question and Clark was hard-pressed to keep his jaw from dropping. He could count on one hand the number of times Batman had qualified a statement at someone else's request - especially when they didn't need to know the answer. 'Close-lipped' didn't even begin to describe the tip of the iceberg that was Batman-Bruce Wayne. "Very few that are strong enough to withstand blows by both Superman and Supergirl, and there have been none yet that can do that _and_ keep track of Flash at the same time. So I did some research."

Diana shifted slightly in the bed, but didn't take her hand from Clark's. She seemed unconcerned about the burns and injuries, although they had to be paining her. "And you discovered...?"

"The creature was made to combat the Justice League - made to be able to counteract our more obvious abilities. Including invulnerability, super-strength, and super-speed."

Clark was a little miffed that Batman answered her question. It seemed that Bruce was willing to humour Diana's curiosity, but not willing to humour Clark's. He understood Bruce's paranoia, and endured his secretive ways, but the irritation with his teammate - and friend - remained.

To distract himself, he picked up on Batman's choice of words. "Made?"

"Designed, made, produced, created," Batman replied. A humourless smile touched the full mouth and he looked over at Clark. "It's not the first time such a thing had happened."

Clark caught the reference and winced. Recently, Kara had discovered she'd been cloned, and that her clone had killed people in cold blood. A psychic link between the girl and the cloned woman had begun a chain of events resulting in a battle between the two, out of which only Kara had emerged alive.

"Do you know if they used Kara's DNA again?"

Batman shook his head. "Not Kara's. Yours."

No disguise in the world could have hidden Clark's grimace or the sudden heavy feeling in his stomach. "Would there be more of them out there?"

"I'd say it's almost a certainty," Batman answered. "We defeated it far too easily."

Diana's mouth twitched, "If that was 'easy' then I should hate to encounter the next creation," she murmured, but there was no offence on her face, only amusement. It was broken up as she yawned, her hand slipping from Clark's grasp to cover her mouth. She stared at the bandages, as if surprised they were there.

"You were fairly badly injured," Clark said by way of explanation. "Does it hurt?"

"Not much." She looked back defensively at him as he narrowed his eyes, questioning her answer. "It doesn't disturb me, Clark."

"Well, you should be resting."

"I've rested all afternoon and evening," she said as she sat up, wincing a little. "I am fine." She pulled off the sheeted covers, revealing more swathings over her bare abdomen and torso - as well as a goodly amount of bare skin, then paused as one black-gloved hand closed around her wrist.

"You'll disturb the bandages, Princess."

Diana looked from the hand on her arm to Batman's mask, incredulously. Then she chuckled and looked from one man to the other. "This is something I never thought to see. Superman and Batman playing mother hen! Great Hera, do wonders never cease?"

_Not around the Woman of Wonder, evidently,_ J'onn spoke into all their heads.

Clark groaned, "That was bad, J'onn, even for you."

_It is early morning. I am watching infomercials and keeping an eye on Wonder Woman. Neither you, nor Batman, have had any sleep in the last twenty-two hours, and Wonder Woman has had enough for all three of you combined, but requires still more if she is to heal properly. It is understandable that you would not appreciate my humour._

"And now J'onn has joined them," Diana remarked, presumably referring to her earlier 'mother hen' comment. A smile still hovered over her lips as she looked from one man to the other. "I will strike a bargain with you, then. I will return to rest, if you - both of you - return home and sleep right now."

There was a moment of silence before Batman asked, "And how do you plan to enforce that, Princess?"

"J'onn will let me know when you are home and in bed," she said with infuriating certainty. "And then I'll rest."

Batman looked over at Clark, then back at Diana, smirking. "You are aware that I could think of a dozen ways to--"

Diana rolled her eyes and pointed imperiously towards the door. "Go."

"Still bossy," Clark teased her, amused to watch her colour a little.

_I will let her know when you are gone,_ J'onn said, inexorable, even in the face of Diana's embarrassment. _You both need the sleep._

"So we're summarily dismissed?"

Batman met his gaze with a shrug that was almost wry - but then, there was nobody here to be intimidated by the Bat - only friends. "It would appear so." He let go of Diana's wrist. "Goodnight, Princess."

"Goodnight, Batman," she replied, with a formality that seemed just a little sad. Then she looked at Clark, "Night, Clark."

"Rest and get better," he told her with a smile, before starting for the door.

As he reached it, he glanced back at her, finding her settling back into the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Probably quietly speaking with J'onn.

The doors hissed shut behind them, and, without any explicit agreement, they headed for the transporter room. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they matched their strides, both tall men, although Clark had a few inches on his friend.

"There's been a recent increase in drug activity in Gotham," Batman said as they walked down the corridor. The topic was apparently random - except that Batman didn't do random. "Several crime lords have been setting up shop. We've been clearing them out, but Batgirl believes there are shipments we're missing that are getting to other cities."

"I'll keep an eye on Metropolis," Clark murmured. He hadn't noticed too much activity in that area, but then, Superman didn't have the kind of underworld informant connections in Metropolis that Batman had in Gotham. They worked in very different styles according to their respective personalities, and they respected each other's methods - particularly when they were in each others' cities.

"She was surprised you came back from Metropolis to see her." And now, Batman wasn't talking about Batgirl. Clark nearly missed a step.

So Bruce wanted to be oblique? Fine. "And she's not the only one surprised you didn't go on patrol in Gotham."

"There was work to be done here." That almost explained Batman's presence.

"And there was a friend to be seen here." And that explained Clark's.

"A friend?"

"A friend," Clark said firmly, sneaking a quick glance at the man beside him. _And why are you asking, anyway?_ He didn't voice the question, though, knowing that Bruce would never answer.

That didn't mean that Clark didn't wonder.

"You know," he said, apropos of nothing in particular, "In my 'perfect world' dream - the one induced by the Black Mercy plant Mongul sent me for my birthday - the woman I woke up beside wasn't Diana." If anything, the woman had been more like Lois - a Kryptonian Lois; which, to Clark's mind, said where his interests lay quite clearly.

Diana was a dear friend and one of his most trusted confidantes, but Clark didn't like her like that.

Bruce, on the other hand...

They said nothing until they reached the transporter room and strode to a transporter to begin programming in their destinations. "How are things at Wayne Enterprises?"

He got a brief glare for mentioning anything to do with Bruce's secret identity. "The usual. How are things at the Planet?"

"Oh, so-so." Clark smirked slightly as he finished the programming and walked to his transporter. "Actually, we got a report from Gotham last week about a new associate seen about the town with Batman. Female, five-foot eleven, black hair, strength in the meta range. Came and went like a shadow. Climbs walls. The newsroom coined her 'Trinity' after the character from _The Matrix_." He arched a brow just before he stepped onto the platform. "A friend?"

His inflection was precisely designed to mimic Bruce's earlier question to him. This time, he got the full-force Batglare, and deflected it with a smirk of his own as Bruce replied, "A friend."

"Good to have that confirmation from the source," Clark said blandly, playing the _Daily Planet_ reporter for all he was worth. "I'll see you the next time the world needs saving. Batman."

The light coalesced around Clark, depositing him in his apartment in Metropolis. He smiled slightly.

If there was one advantage of being 'the Big Blue Boyscout' of the group, it was that when he did want to give someone a verbal nudge, they were rarely expecting it. And there was always a distinct satisfaction on the rare occasions he succeeded in provoking Bruce.

The smile faded as he stripped out of his uniform and put it into the wash.

The matter of Diana's involvement with Bruce - whatever it might be - was a little worrying, for Diana's sake. It wasn't that Clark didn't like Bruce, it was just that Bruce was...well, _Bruce_. He came with...baggage. More baggage than Clark would wish on a woman he cared about, even if not in _that_ way.

He'd have to sit down and talk with Diana sometime soon. About Bruce and Batman and relationships. Sometime soon.

Right now, he was going to sleep.

----


	5. Fight Like The Odds Aren't Against You 2

**Book One: Good Intentions**

**-- Fight As Though The Odds Aren't Against You --**

**(2)**

It was a relief to sit in the bar lounge of the Phoenix Casino and be ignored by the passers-by.

Diana smiled to herself as she watched the people down on the casino floor below and stirred the ice in her drink. She'd never been to a casino as a patron and guest before.

There were many things she'd never done before, even after two years in Man's World.

She watched a stout couple squeal and hug each other as they won a large amount of money at a table with a spinning wheel and a grid of rectangles. She tilted her head to study the cards being placed out at one of the tables, and tried to figure out how the game worked.

Around her swirled the chatter and mutter of the casino patrons, an unending murmur in the background. She could block it out if she chose, but it made a rather pleasant white noise, compared to the very distinct silence of the Watchtower.

She'd been at the Watchtower far too much lately. Her injuries didn't permit her to join in with any recent actions, and she'd only just started retraining. Only stretches and strengthening moves just yet, but in another week she would need opponents to start practising against, giving her bones a chance to strengthen as they knitted together.

Diana shifted in her chair, and the woman reflected in the glass partition that separated this lounge from the floor below moved in concert.

The woman in the reflection of the glass looked nothing like Wonder Woman, or even Diana of Themiscyra.

Her hair was Nordic blonde and piled up on her head. Her eyes were blue, yes, but they were an icy shade, not the colour of the sea around Themiscyra, and her skin was pale as milk, not gently tanned from the sun. The features were different, too, more elfin, without the earthy beauty Diana was more accustomed to seeing when she looked in the mirror. And the face in the reflection bore none of Diana's present scars.

She hadn't asked Zatanna to cast the glamour just because of the scars. The Amazons had admired physical beauty, yes, but their interest had been more for the fluid, muscular beauty of the human form in action rather than the static, wraithlike beauty so preferred in the women's magazines of Man's World. Her scars did not distress her, although she saw the distress in the eyes of those around her.

She had simply wished to be without the attention her presence usually brought her while she attended Zatanna's show and dined with the magician afterwards.

The mirror showed the illusion, Zatanna had explained after she'd cast the spell. "_This is how you'll appear to people._"

Diana had studied the features in the mirror, "_Not exactly the nondescript person I expected,_" she'd noted, and Zatanna had smiled.

"_Well, this way, they'll stare, but they'll be too intimidated to approach._"

"_I think that's the story of my life here in Man's World,_" Diana had said, wryly. She had indeed grown accustomed to the stares and admiration of men; their instinctive response to her when she was around them, the unsuccessfully-hidden desire that flared in their eyes as she walked past. But for all that they looked much, they rarely spoke of such interest.

And the only man in whom she'd expressed an interest had turned her down. With good reason, but the answer was still 'no.'

Sitting in the sunlight streaming through the window above her, she held out her left hand before her and stared at it. To the naked eye, she saw herself as she was, but the illusion was complete to everyone else. The scabs were giving way to scar tissue, and within another couple of weeks the scar tissue would all but have vanished, leaving skin that looked as untouched and perfect as it had been before the battle.

A voice interrupted her study. "Have we met?"

Startled, she looked up into the suave, interested features of Bruce Wayne, and nearly called him by name.

Then she remembered that he couldn't recognise her beneath the illusion Zatanna had cast and looked swiftly away, fighting the urge to laugh. Her friend had claimed that the beauty of this illusion would intimidate men. Unfortunately for Diana, Bruce Wayne was not the sort of man to be intimidated by beauty.

"I don't believe so," she said, aware that he was watching her. She'd betrayed herself with her reaction to him, perhaps if she was careful, he might mistake it for fluster instead of recognition? "You must be mistaken."

He shook his head, "I was so sure..." Regardless of his mistake, he sat himself down in the chair to the left of her and held out his hand. "Bruce Wayne, of Wayne Enterprises."

She took his hand, and reached for a name out of nowhere. "Donna Kent."

One dark brow arched, "Kent?"

_Yes, after Clark. _"It's a perfectly serviceable name." Diana looked pointedly at the hand he was still holding. "May I have my hand back, Mr. Wayne?"

His thumb rubbed warmly over the scabs on the back of her hand, pressing at the raised, pink skin, and sending an odd twinge down her spine. "Zatanna's work?" And his voice wasn't the brash, charming one of Bruce Wayne, but the deeper, more solemn voice of Batman.

Diana stared at him in surprise as she pulled her hand from his. "You're not supposed to be able..."

His eyes crinkled a little at the corners as he grinned. "It doesn't work on her, or you, or anyone on whom she has protections," he told her. "But I'm the only one of that ilk, so you have nothing to fear." He gazed out over the floor. "Are you meeting with her?"

"I'm attending one of her shows - a matineé, and then we're going out to dinner afterwards," she said, ignoring the flutter in her stomach. "You?"

"Pure serendipity. I was attending to some Wayne Enterprises business," he said, sitting back. One hand waved lazily to flag down a waiter and one headed for their table immediately. "We'd just finished our meeting." He turned to the hovering man, "A cognac - your best." He regarded the glass in Diana's hand. "Would you like another?"

"Cola, please," she told the waiter. "We?"

He steepled his fingers before him. "Myself, Lucius, and a couple of other directors."

"And you left them behind?" Diana asked, surprised that he'd put aside business for the chance to talk to a pretty woman. It seemed so out of character for him, although she had to admit that she knew Bruce better in the guise of Batman than the personality he projected as Bruce Wayne.

"I told them I'd meet them at the airport," he dismissed casually, and regarded her with lazy indulgence.

She felt faintly exposed beneath that gaze. "So if you can't see Zatanna's work," she asked, careful to keep her voice even and level, "How did you know she'd done anything in the first place?"

The smile grew faintly predatory. "First, you're very well-known. Second, those scars you're presently sporting are an instant draw to the eye - people notice them. Third, people are noticing you - but their reactions aren't because they recognise you as famous or because of the scars."

"And the insistence on touching my hand?"

"Most of this kind of work is only effective on sight. However, what has been done to you works on touch, too. The tactile aspect comes off rather more completely than sight, actually - which is backwards to the way it usually is."

"Appropriate for Zatanna," Diana murmured, although her mind was spinning. Did the man notice _everything_?

"Very." The cognac and the cola arrived, and he paid the waiter, tipping quite generously before taking a sip from the belled glass.

He met her gaze over the lip of the glass, and she studied him. He was handsome by conventional standards, with the ease and confidence born of wealth and privilege. The eyes were deepset and hooded, and while the look he gave her was languid, the intensity of everything that drove him could not be hidden, merely veiled. Not for the first time, she wondered at this man who played the fool in the light, yet stood a sworn protector to Gotham in the night.

"Like what you see?" The smirk was entirely Bruce Wayne, and a confusing contrast to the man who'd taken his cowl from his head so she could see his face as he told her that he would never allow her close enough to take him from Gotham.

"A woman would be blind not to," she replied, easily. Yes, she liked what she saw; but more than that, she liked what he _was_, in all its complexity.

His mouth crooked. "Thank you."

She turned her gaze back to the floor of the casino, once again conscious of his gaze upon her. "Why did you approach me?" Her voice was low, the question serious.

"How could I not?" The reply was lazy, easy. "The most beautiful woman in the room..."

"Bruce." She stopped him before he could go any further, keeping her voice at a level at which no-one else would be able to hear. "Leave the playboy behind."

"Donna..." he chided, still smiling.

Not for the first time, Diana felt irritation rise in her, a swift, sure pang in her chest. He might be able to compartmentalise effortlessly; she could not.

She stood, leaving her drink where it sat on the glass tabletop, condensation dripping down its sides. "Very well, Bruce," she began, softly, "If you aren't leaving him behind, then I will."

Once again, she was reminded of just how fast he moved for one without metahuman abilities. He caught her wrist in his hand as she turned to leave, his fingers too hot on her skin, the finely-chiselled mouth too close to hers. "Diana..."

His murmur was barely audible, but she heard it clearly enough. "I don't play games."

"Neither do I." And the voice was Batman's. "I approached you because I wanted to, Diana. Is that reason enough?"

This close to him, she could taste him in the air beneath the tang of his aftershave, an olfactory intoxication. He was dangerous in more ways than mere combat. She had accepted his initial insistence that he would never allow her close enough to distract him from Gotham, but had resolved not to merely sit back and give up the fight to persuade him otherwise.

"I thought I would take a walk on the floor below," she said, not quite answering his question.

"Would you accept my company?"

"Would I be walking in the company of the playboy or Bruce Wayne?"

"You forget," he murmured back. "Bruce Wayne _is_ the playboy."

She shook her head in negation. "The playboy is a part of who you are, but it is not the whole of you."

His lips twitched, the finely-chiselled shape of them drawing her brief attention. "Perhaps you would be amenable to meeting elsewhere?" His gaze was fixed on her own mouth as she dragged her eyes up to his, and again she saw the brief flash of desire, swiftly tamed to his will.

_Control is important, Diana._

She wondered what he was like when he lost that control, and coloured under such thoughts. "Where, then?"

"Tomorrow," he said. "At six, in the training room."

"Training…?" In the last few days, she'd been looking for someone to spar against, and was finding herself frustrated at every turn. "Tomorrow night?" She knew that her stance changed slightly, became more war-like, tense and ready for battle.

Bruce's smile turned into a smirk. "Down, girl," he said, very softly as he let her arm go, leaving a cold patch on her skin. "I'll see you then. Enjoy your show."

And, with a charming smile, he walked away and out of the bar.

----

He didn't pull his punches for her, and she didn't ask him to.

Nevertheless, as he laid her out on the floor of the training room, once more, Batman felt a certain frustration take hold of him.

Usually, their sparring matches went on for long periods of time, her strength against his skill, each of them watching, attacking, defending, learning. He was better at observing the patterns of attack and defence; she was better at getting out of the situations where a weakness was exploited to give an advantage.

However, her injuries meant she was still favouring her right side - the side more injured in the battle against the volcanic monster. It left her wide open to any attacks he made, and he'd already chided her twice.

"You're lowering your left side defences again," Batman said as Diana climbed to her feet. He kept his voice curt, and watched the brief frown flit across her features. It settled into a rueful half-smile.

There should have been some kind of a law against a woman being that beautiful while still sporting scars.

"My humility is getting a workout at least," she said dryly.

Her preparedness would get a workout, too, Batman decided as he lashed out at her unready stance. Clark would have chided him for being too harsh on her. In Batman's terms, there was no such thing as 'too harsh' when it came to training; better in training than the real thing.

Her hand caught his wrist as he punched, lightning fast, and he felt her haul on his arm, adding weight to his momentum. The pulling motion caught him off-balance and he went with it, kicking up at her as he tumbled, head over heels.

When he got back to his feet, she was ready for him, smiling slightly.

"Very good, Princess," he told her, pleased that she'd anticipated that much.

"Thank you, Batman," she replied, as casually as if they were sitting down to dinner.

And then they were back to business. His next series of attacks were high, and he watched the pattern of her defenses as he advanced on her. She was stronger high and on the left, but low and right…

He attacked from that angle and watched her struggle to defend herself. Yes, that was her weakness there…

However, as he closed in on her, she still managed to ably deflect his attack - albeit somewhat more stiffly than she usually would.

Blue eyes flashed in pleasure at her defence, and Batman was equally pleased by her progress. As the training session progressed, she was becoming more aware of the gaps and holes in her guard - something to which she'd been largely oblivious before. And blind spots could be dangerous for more reasons than one.

His own blind spot when it came to her was nothing obvious. Paranoid as he was, he hadn't noticed it at all, which was saying something. But he'd finally realised that she spent much of her time in the monitor and training rooms, which was also where he was used to spending his time in the Watchtower. Looking back at their association, particularly in the last year, he concluded that while his reasons for being in the Watchtower had been valid, they had been influenced by the possibility of seeing her, speaking with her, even if only in passing.

His decision had made him reconsider whether he needed to be at the Watchtower for smaller duties that could be taken care of in the Batcave and had brought him to the point where he spent only the barest minimum of time on League duties.

Until she'd been injured by the volcano creature.

That night, he'd handed Gotham over to Nightwing, Batgirl, and Robin, and done his research up in the Watchtower.

He told himself that it was League business and important. A creature that was created from Clark's genetic material, and further engineered to combat other well-known League members was a danger of the highest priority and required all his attention. Being in Wayne Manor with the reports coming in from his colleagues out on the streets would only distract him from the research required.

It was true; it was League business and important, and Gotham would be a distraction he didn't need

But he couldn't deny that Diana was important. The research was for the League, but also for her, because he'd lost enough people he cared about to do everything in his power avoiding losing another one.

Knowing all the reasons why a relationship was a bad idea had very little to do with whether or not he actually cared.

The training room air-conditioners hummed a little louder, responding to the minute changes in temperature caused by active bodies radiating heat. Neither of them was sweating, but she was tiring a little. No surprises; she wasn't yet back to full strength, but the purpose of today was to ensure she did.

He spotted an opening in her defence - just a moment's negligence - and went in for the kill. Metaphorically, of course. This time, it was a full-body take-out and she was down for the count. If she'd been a criminal and this was Gotham, she'd have been tied within moments.

As it was, he had her pinned, face-to-face.

And not just face-to-face, either.

His armour was insulation against more than just blows; it meant he couldn't _quite_ feel the body lying beneath his. Unfortunately, body armour was no insulation against the awareness of her proximit. In spite of himself and all his decisions, he felt himself tensing, and knew that she - considerably less armoured, and just as aware of him as he was of her - could feel it, too.

Bruce wondered what it would be like to lie against her, no armour, no cloth, just skin dragging against skin and the flat surface beneath them. Heat swept through him, over him… Time flexed, as though it were an elastic that could be dragged out, and he could feel her breath finely against his jaw, a seductive promise, devoid of words.

Diana broke the spell, huskily. "Should I ask?" She arched a brow at him, not struggling to get up, but querying both his silence and his stillness.

His self-control took command and dumped a bucket of cold water over his thoughts.

"No," he replied, and rolled off her and onto his feet, letting his cloak slip down around him in concealment and using the cool of the air to calm his body. "When you're ready, Princess," he said, evenly.

_Control is important._

Her eyes flashed, whether in frustration or anger, he didn't know, and she launched herself at him. For a moment, he thought she'd allowed her anger to get the better of her, before he realised that she was still quite in control. Her emotions were fuelling her actions, but they weren't controlling it.

It pleased him to see that she was using her frustration as a goad, mastering it and letting it drive her on. He knew how that worked.

Of course, there were always some things you couldn't entirely sublimate - as the moment which had just passed showed.

Batman blocked a series of punches, choosing stances that wouldn't just stop the blows, but which would also lessen the impact of her fists against him.

There was irony in the fact that Bruce Wayne's reputation as a womanizer was widely-known, when in fact, he could count his lovers on one hand. Even more ironic was that, of that handful of lovers, almost all had known he was Batman and not merely Bruce Wayne.

As he kicked at her hip with the heel of his boot, he found his boot caught in a firm grip. She flipped him around and down, laying him out on the floor, face-down, with one boot planted firmly in the small of his back, and her hands holding down right wrist and elbow.

Not bad. The position was probably more uncomfortable for her than it was for him, and dangerously off-balance. It wouldn't be effective when used by someone who didn't possess super-strength. However, when used by someone who did, it was effective enough. Laid out flat as Batman was, he had minimal leverage. Of course, minimal leverage was very different than 'no leverage at all.'

As he regarded her out of his peripheral vision, he smirked a little. "Going dominatrix on me now, Princess?"

"The gods know nothing else seems to work," she muttered, stepping back to let him up and returning to a ready-stance as she added, louder, "Unfortunately, I left my lasso in my room. Later, maybe."

It was the first real sign of frustration with him since their discussion in the Batcave, some weeks ago. He'd been expecting such signs a lot earlier than this.

Since the night in the Batcave, he'd been on his guard against her, spending no less time with her than they usually did in the course of their duties, but being careful not to seek her out when a little spare time loomed. In the last few weeks, Batman had become acutely aware of how subtly she'd crept into his thoughts during their time working together in the League.

He didn't dare remind himself how startled and then pleased he'd been yesterday afternoon as he glanced over the bar lounge and recognised her from nothing more than the cant of her head and the line of her wrist.

Diana was dangerous to him; strong, beautiful, and deadly. She made him want to own her, to possess her, to claim her, and yet also wanted to tease her, to laugh with her, to love her.

But he didn't.

Batman kept everyone at arm's length, whether they liked it or not. Whether he liked it or not. That was the way it had to be and he might regret it, but he dared not change it.

As he climbed to his feet, his earpiece bleeped - a signal from Batgirl in Gotham. He held up one hand to signal a halt to their sparring. "Go ahead."

Batgirl's voice filled his ears. "We've got a major drug bust going down with the GCPD. And I'm not kidding. This is _major_. A large party of kids and teenagers have OD'd - I think it's the batch we failed to track three weeks ago. Half the cops in Gotham are gathering on the scene - it's..." Babs paused a moment. "It's not pretty."

Drug overdoses never were. "You're at the scene?"

"Nightwing's in there, feeding me."

He'd turned on his heel and headed for the doors, automatically. "Send me the co-ordinates. I'll take a transporter down." Batgirl dictated the co-ordinates, and closed the communications line.

He looked up and paused. Diana was standing in the doorway, blocking his exit.

"Do you need help with this?"

"Not from you." The words were sharper than he liked, but he couldn't afford distractions right now. "I don't need another person to watch out for."

Her eyes narrowed and he silently cursed her stubborn pride, even as she insisted, "You don't need to watch out for me, Bruce."

What the hell; he was in for a quarter, he might as well go for the shiny silver dollar. "Someone has to."

"What does that mean?"

He moved on instinct, his fist landing on the rib that had been broken, and she gasped and stepped back, but didn't fall. It was healed - he would never have hit her otherwise - but it still hurt, and he faced her without apparent remorse at the painful point made. "You went into that fight unprepared, without thinking." At least his anger at her recklessness was no act. "You got yourself injured. Had there been others relying on you, they might have been injured too - and not everyone has your resilience."

She drew herself up, however much the injury might hurt, she was a warrior at heart, and strong in mind and spirit and not just body. "Which is why I went up against it myself," she replied, steadily, although he could see the hurt in her eyes, hear the harshness of her voice. "Better me than someone else."

"Perhaps. It was still rash."

"I survived it, Bruce," she said. "Another would not have been so fortunate. _You _would not have been so fortunate." Then she bit her lip, probably at having reminded him that he was, after all, only human.

"And that's the problem," he said, quietly now, but no less harsh.

"What?"

He regarded her evenly. "Love makes fools of us all." He could not afford to love her. Never mind that his heart didn't get a say in it; his mind was made up and he'd live with his choice. Batman sidestepped her and palmed the door open.

Diana didn't follow him, but he heard her words as he passed into the corridor to head for the transporters.

"Perhaps." Her voice was pitched very low and he could barely hear it. "But if I had the choice to love or not to love, I would still choose to love you, Bruce."

His chest squeezed unbearably for a moment, causing him to pause for a split-second. Then he kept walking on through the mostly-silent Watchtower to the transporters, leaving her behind without a further word. He knew he showed no reaction on the outside, but something in him caught at her words.

He was only human, however much he had to deny it at times.

_I would still choose to love you, Bruce._

----


	6. Fight Like The Odds Aren't Against You 3

**Book One: Good Intentions**

**-- Fight As Though The Odds Aren't Against You --**

**(3)**

It was going to be a long night.

Dick's headcam had a clear view of the Allinson house.

It meant that Barbara Gordon had dress-circle seats to something she really would rather not have seen. The weeping parents, the body bags being carried out by grim-faced officers, the stretchers with the convulsing bodies - or worse, utterly still ones - and the unhappy medics.

"Getting all this?" Dick asked her.

"Like a digital movie," she replied, and was proud when her voice didn't waver, although it echoed slightly in the hollow area of the Batcave.

"Horrible, isn't it?"

His revulsion relieved her of the need to put on a brave face. Her answer was frank, if not quite as revolted as his. "I think I'm about to be sick," she said. "At least I won't clog up the Cavendish house gutters if I puke, though. Good thing they're on holiday right now."

"It'll make for an interesting conversation at their next dinner party," Dick muttered, and affected Mary Cavendish's shrill voice - although on a considerably softer scale. "'_You'll never guess what we found in our drains last week..._'"

Babs grinned. Dick was priceless, in costume or out. "Charming idea of dinner conversation you have."

"Blame _him_," Dick retorted, lightly - a slander if Barbara had ever heard one. Bruce had exquisite manners when he 'remembered' to have them in his persona as Bruce Wayne. "You're sure he's on his way?"

"Quite sure." The voice that came over the communications system wasn't hers. "So pleased to know you've learned a thing or two in the last dozen years."

Babs grinned silently, covering her mouth to hide the smile, although neither man could see her.

"Yeah, well, I'm a chip off the old block," Dick retorted, and the smile faded from Barbara's mouth as swiftly as it had come. There was an element of bitter truth in Dick's words, and they all felt it, especially Bruce, although his next question was directed at her rather than Dick.

"What did they find?"

"Mostly cocaine," she replied, recalling the reports she'd picked up over the scanners and through Nightwing's video and sound feed. Parabolic microphones were a wonder of modern technology - it was amazing just how much you could pick up from across the road. Of course, the ambient noise of the vicinity could make distinguishing individual conversations difficult, but that was why samplers and synthesisers had been created, wasn't it? "Some marijuana, but nothing else."

"They haven't checked the freezer yet," Nightwing murmured, almost beneath his breath.

Babs chuckled lightly. "I doubt they'd find anything there."

"I'm not even going to ask how you two know that," Batman said, calmly, although there was a faintly threatening note in it - probably directed at Dick rather than her.

"We could ask the same thing of you," Nightwing retorted.

"Basic chemistry," was all the reply he got. "Have they found anything yet?"

Barbara swiftly scanned the feeds she had flowing in to the screens before her, all business. "GCPD has no leads on the matter," she added, passing the information on from one of the feeds. "The known outlets for drugs are quiet, and most of the suppliers seem to have faded into the woodwork."

"Any unusual transactions going through the shipping yards?"

Her hands flashed over the keyboards and she grimaced. "Define 'unusual,'" she muttered as she pulled up records she'd stored in the computer after Nightwing's foray into Gotham's shipping yards some three weeks previously. "I have a manifest of the pallets and where they went, but none of them are known fronts for drug activity. The twenty pallets that Nightwing ID'd were toy shipments."

"Ugly suckers."

"And then some." Babs had seen Dick's recorded feed of the toys and wondered who'd designed such a horrible-looking toy. "Other than that, there were twenty-five pallets of assorted computer parts, sixteen pallets of stationary, ten pallets of encyclopaedias - Americana, I think - and sixty pallets of rice."

"Rice?" Nightwing questioned.

"Jasmine rice from South-East Asia," Barbara read off the goods manifest. "Thailand, to be precise. All those new Asian restaurants popping up along Little Chinatown have to get their goods from somewhere, you know."

"I'll keep that in mind the next time I frequent one. Care to join me?"

A warm thrill ran through her at the invitation. Of course, he was probably just kidding around, but that didn't stop her from feeling all tingly about it. She opened her mouth to make a smart retort--

"Work now, play later, Nightwing, Batgirl." Babs felt a brief stab of resentment at her mentor for stopping the banter between her and Dick. Then, on the screen of the video feed, she saw another girl carried out on a stretcher, the lower half of her face streaked with the black lines of dried blood. The kid couldn't be more than eighteen, maybe not even that.

She shivered. The Batcave was suddenly a lot colder.

At college, Barbara Gordon had known enough people who did drugs, although she never had. She'd seen the devastating effects of drug use on families through the eyes of her dad and his cops and wasn't about to become another statistic.

"That's Petra Carletti," Nightwing muttered. "Final year at St. Agnes' Girls."

Babs was tempted to ask how Dick knew the girl, but bit down on the question. It wasn't her business, and Batman had already come down on them once for teasing. She began issuing commands to the Batcomputer, hacking into the police files as they scrolled data across the screens. The Gotham City Police Network was a wonderful thing - both for the Police and for her activities as Batgirl.

"They're beginning to put up a list of the kids," she said after a moment. "Encrypted, of course." Not that the encryptions were a problem for _her_.

"Of course," Batman said grimly.

As the list appeared on her screen, Bab's eyes widened. "Batman, this is like a junior Who's Who of Gotham... DiPietro, Winsor, Carletti, Dickson-Smith, Mitsiou, Belcourt..."

"Belcourt..." Nightwing pondered. "Not Jemima Belcourt?"

A quick glance confirmed it, and as she transmitted the information to them, he swore. "Damien Belcourt's one of the directors of Wayne Enterprises. His daughter's the apple of his eye."

Barbara winced. "Not anymore," she murmured, almost to herself.

On the screen, she saw more ambulance workers go into the house, returning for the last few kids. Some fifteen to twenty teenagers had partied hard while the Allinson adults were away on holiday - most were being carted away in the ambulances that pulled out into the night, their lights flashing in bleak urgency.

Her dad walked out of the house, his expression harsh as he escorted one of the Allinson boys out of the house. Tony or Toby or some name beginning with a T, Babs recalled. When she'd met him, the boy had been charming enough; he was hardly that now, his face all pale and frozen with fear, and his eyes hollow with the horror he'd witnessed tonight.

Another kid was brought out on a stretcher, and then there were just the remaining kids from the party, four or five who'd either been strong enough not to give in to peer pressure, or who'd had the fortune to be at the tail end of the drug handout queue. Some wept, some shivered, all were gently ushered into police cars even as the parents began converging on the scene, yelling for their kids.

Bad news travelled fast in Gotham.

"We're going to track the shipment that came in on _Madeira Star_," Batman said.

"All of it?"

"All of it."

"There have been other shipments since then," Nightwing protested. "Might have been one of them."

"Unlikely," Batman dismissed. "The increase in trading activity began two days after _Star_ delivered her cargo. That's a day before _Lolita_ unloaded."

"There was nothing on _Madeira Star_." Uh-oh.

"One hundred and twenty pallets of goods does not exactly equal 'nothing,'" Batman remarked dryly.

"We checked that--"

"Then we check it again," Batman said, and there was an ominous note in his voice. Babs winced, just as glad that neither man could see her expression. "We track every moment of it from the portside warehouses to the retailers and we account for every item in those shipments. Batgirl?"

"Batman?"

"Is any of the _Star_ shipmentstill at the Port Authority?"

Babs pulled up another screen. "The encyclopaedias are still in storage - something about a lack of demand and there's an argument going on between the Port Authority and the trader..." She scrolled lightly through twenty pages of emails and winced, then hauled out another string of data and sent it to another screen. "And there's some trouble with ten of the computer pallets - one of the dealers went out of business and the stuff's still in the warehouse - Shed M."

"If it was drugs, they'd move it through as fast as possible."

"Maybe. Do the police have any leads?"

She was pretty sure they didn't, but she checked anyway. "Not yet." In a day or so, there'd be pressure to have leads as parents demanded that the GCPD find someone to blame for the delinquency of their children, and the leads would start pouring in: false, crazy, insane, unrealistic - it didn't matter to the Gothamites, just as long as someone was doing _something_ about 'the situation.'

"Then we do it the hard way."

Nightwing huffed. "I guess it's another trip back to the docks then," he muttered. "At least it's not as far to get home."

Babs' cell phone, sitting on the desk a bare foot away, began beeping and buzzing. She didn't always keep it on and nearby when she was doing Bat-work, but she'd had a feeling her dad would call at some point tonight.

"Batgirl out, gotta take a private call." She switched the headphones off, knowing that everything that came through them was being recorded by the Batcomputer, and picked up the cell. "Hey, Dad."

"Babs." He sounded tired and stressed, and her heart went out to him. "Have you seen the news?"

"Yeah," she said, glancing up at the newscast being shown on a high-up screen. "Is it as bad as they're saying?"

"Worse," Jim Gordon said, grimly. "Much worse. Babs..."

"Good thing I don't have to sit up waiting for you to come home these days," she said, trying to inject a lighter note into the conversation.

"You never waited up for me."

"Are you sure of that, Dad?"

The silence on the other end of the phone meant he had a smile on his mouth. Then she heard and saw the reporter pushing through the police lines, trying to get a word with her father. "Commissioner! Commissioner Gordon!"

Detective Everett-Millar intercepted the reporter. Babs heard the reporter's protests and the Detective's cool refusals in the background of the call.

"Honey, I have to go. I just..." She heard the remainder of his words. _I just wanted to say I love you._

"I know, Dad," she told him. "And get some sleep tonight, okay?"

He laughed briefly. "Sure, Babs."

They both knew he'd be out until long past midnight, sorting out the mess down at the Department. "Love you, Dad." She didn't say the words often, but tonight she figured he needed to hear them after seeing that.

"Same here, kiddo. Same here."

Batman and Nightwing were holding a politely tense conversation when she switched the headphones back on.

"--could do with her help."

"We can do this alone."

"Yes," Nightwing said, and his voice had the careful quality of someone who knew they were on thin ice - like a junior detective gently suggesting to a proud senior that maybe they needed to bring in outside resources to close the case. "But we can do this faster if we had Shadow. Security in and out of the place is tighter since our last attempt - the Port Authority may not be in on this deal, but something is going on."

The silence was deafening, and Babs concentrated on the news feed and the faint words that were coming from that. Nightwing's camera was showing Batman's profile as the young man used all the force of his dynamic personality to persuade his mentor to see things his way.

Babs had to admit, Batman looked dramatic and tense in that pose, the wind tugging at the edges of his cape, the garish lights of the police car washing over him with red-blue intensity. He also looked quite adamant as Nightwing continued.

"They wouldn't be expecting a meta, Batman," Nightwing said. "Humans, yes; metas, no."

"We don't need her. We don't need metas." There was a hard undercurrent of anger and, yes, pride, in Batman's voice. Babs understood - sort of. The world had a tendency to look as metas as either the heroes or the problem. Batman and his associates were managing Gotham without so much as a hint of meta ability.

"Maybe not," Nightwing said. "But they can be useful at times."

"Did you want to call in the Justice League while you're at it?"

"I'm just suggesting that some help might be in order." The visuals on the headcam swivelled back to the cops below. It looked like most of the teenagers had been taken away, and now it was just the cops cleaning up - and her dad looking tired and unhappy.

"Which part of 'we can do this ourselves' didn't you understand?" Batman growled.

"The part where you're so intent on maintaining your image that you wouldn't ask for help if it killed you. Or," Nightwing said, in what sounded like a sudden burst of inspiration, "The part where you're so intent on keeping her at arm's length that you're not even going to ask for her help."

Babs blinked, and quietly thumped her head against the heel of her hand. _Dick, the ice is _really _thin where you're tap-dancing right now - and do you care to share your logic with the rest of the class?_

"You have no idea what you're talking about." It was a standard Bruce denial, flatly given after a brief silence, nothing unusual.

"I know it wouldn't hurt to care a little. Loosen up." Nightwing developed an evil lilt to his voice. "Bend over and let someone remove that rod rammed up your ass."

Babs bit down on her lip to stop from laughing - or crying - she wasn't sure which it was going to be at this point in time.

"I think that's enough," Batman ground out, unimpressed with Dick's humour. "Batgirl, transmit the goods manifest off the _Star_ to the Batmobile and pull what you can from the police reports of tonight - including any links back to the _Star_'s cargo. Nightwing, confirm the remaining cargo from the _Star_ is as listed. When you finish checking the docks, work with Batgirl to track the deliveries and check them out - _all_ of them."

"And you'll be doing what?"

"Talking to some people I know." _Informants._

"Damien's going to be wrecked about this," Nightwing muttered.

"That's not your concern. Do the docks inspection, then meet up with Batgirl."

"Yes, sir. Immediately, sir!" Nightwing's camera moved, heading up towards the roof. Then it turned back. "You know, Batman," he said, quite clearly, "your problem isn't that you don't care. You care; you just don't like other people to know it. Might ruin the image." And then he was gone down the other side of the roof and over two fences into the street on the other side, lithe as an athlete.

Babs winced. Trust Dick to get the last word in. She switched to a private channel and flipped the recording feature off. "That was harsh."

"Yeah, well, I'm tired of the 'too cool to care' shit I always get from him," Nightwing grumbled into his headset. "You going to be working from the cave or at home?"

Babs glanced around, "I might head home, actually," she said. "I can work from there just as easily as here, and it's not so big and empty."

"Pop upstairs and see if Alfred's baked any cookies, will ya," Nightwing said. "And don't eat them all before I get there."

"You're bringing the slushies," she warned him, searching out several documents and protocols that she'd need for the night's work.

"It's a date," he replied, and she heard the rev of his motorcycle in the background. "I'm turning this off - will call you if I need info. Otherwise, see you midnight."

"Midnight," she confirmed. "Batgirl out."

There'd been nothing from Batman during this time, and Babs switched back to the general channel. "Batman?"

"Have you transmitted the manifest to the Batmobile?"

"Done," she replied and hoped he hadn't heard the yawn at the end of her affirmation.

"Are you awake enough to do this? We can't afford mistakes."

_Damn_. "Yes."

"Send the report in on the destinations of the cargo when you're done."

"Will do."

"Batman out."

She wondered briefly if he'd stop by and talk to her dad before he left the neighbourhood, or if he'd save that for later. Probably later, around two in the morning when Dad was asleep on his feet and everything was looking bad.

Her dad had once confessed that Batman's visits were never uplifting - they usually meant that they were in the middle of something bad - but there was an almost comforting solidarity to them. They were both beleaguered criminal-chasers, trying to keep afloat in a sea of crime. Commissioner Jim Gordon simply did his job in the public eye, and Batman did his job out of it.

The news feed was showing her dad now, making a calm and weary statement about the Allinson incident. Babs didn't listen - there'd be enough newsfeeds of it in the next couple of days. The office talk was going to revolve around this - especially given the list of victims. Never let it be said that money and power couldn't achieve results as effective as the simple pursuit of justice.

Of course when money and power _met_ the pursuit of justice...

Babs glanced up at the high ceiling of the Batcave, at the giant penny and the display cases of costumes, at the cave that had been birthed from tragedy and wrought with the Wayne fortune and Bruce's ghosts.

It was an obsession: she never forgot that. But it was an obsession worth following - at least, to some degree. Wasn't that why she put on the mask and costume of Batgirl and had gotten Bruce to train her up - one more caped vigilante in the streets of Gotham?

She saved her links, logged off the Batcomputer, and collected her phone. A quick glance around to check everything was left neat - Bruce could be anal about that - then upstairs to see if Alfred was making or had made cookies before heading back to the clocktower to do the research.

It was going to be a long night.

----


	7. Fight Like The Odds Aren't Against You 4

**Book One: Good Intentions**

**-- Fight As Though The Odds Aren't Against You --**

**(4)**

The door to the Batcave closed with the faintest of clicks, and Bruce stood in the empty hallway and listened to the silence.

Outside Wayne Manor, the wind whistled past, a blustering thing that rattled at the windows to gain entry to the house, denied at every turn. Bruce lifted his gaze up towards the darkness hovering in the high reaches of the ceiling, pushed back by the lamp on the table by the stairs, but waiting to rush back in and claim its rightful place.

He savoured the silence with only a little bitterness. There were moments in his life when he wondered what it might have been like to be normal. If his parents had lived and he'd never become Batman, what kind of man would he be?

Tonight, he'd seen parents weep as they were told about their kids. He'd crouched in the shadows over the police station, seen white-faced men and women arrive and watched them leave, haggard. Some wept, some raged, some begged, some snarled, but the emotions they felt were the same at the base. Loss, grief, the end of innocence...

Bruce understood those emotions only too well. His perspective was different, the child bereft of parents, but the sentiment was still the same. A sundering of what had once been whole and the knowledge that nothing would be the same again.

If not for his parents, dying on a cold autumn night in Gotham, would he have been one of the men who walked out of the Gotham Police Headquarters, hands clenched in anger and frustration, in fear and grief for what his son or daughter had done?

If not for his parents, dying on a cold autumn night in Gotham, would he have been like one of the teenagers who went to a party, young and immortal, leaving behind a cold corpse devoid of the beauty with which life had imbued it?

His rational side knew there was no answer to such a question, but sometimes...sometimes...

Sometimes he wondered.

A door creaked, further along the hallway. Bruce turned just as Alfred stepped out of the kitchen, carrying a tray with a steaming mug and a plate of cookies. "I take it was a long night, Master Bruce?" Alfred indicated the stairs, and Bruce led the way up them. He'd have offered to take the tray from the old man's hands, but knew better than to try.

"Harder than usual." He rubbed lightly at the back of his neck easing some of the muscle tension there. He'd have to get Alfred to give him a full-body massage tomorrow - it had been long enough since he'd availed himself of the old butler's services as a masseur that Bruce was all knots.

"Watching the news was unpleasant. I cannot conceive it being any more pleasant in person," Alfred remarked from behind. "Did Miss Barbara find any leads to assist you?"

Bruce grimaced. "Plenty of leads," he said. "But very few were helpful." He led the way into the master bedroom. "Not her fault, just no clues as to how the drugs got into Gotham." Alfred put the tray down on the table as Bruce flung himself into a chair, frustrated by tonight's events.

Logically, he knew there was nothing he could have done to stop the teenagers from using the drugs. Emotionally, he felt as though he should have done more.

"You did what you could to stop the drugs from coming in," Alfred observed.

"But they got past our guard," Bruce muttered.

"If I may recycle the old cliché, Master Bruce; you cannot save them all."

Bruce regarded Alfred over the edge of his mug. "Have you been talking to Diana?"

Alfred paused with a plate of cookies halfway towards him. "I have not," he observed. "She has not been around, although I have received a call inquiring about the recipe for the honey-nut slice she enjoyed during her stay at the Manor."

Bruce took a cookie from the tray and began nibbling it. After a moment, he became aware of the frosty silence from his butler, and glanced over at the elderly man. "Alfred?"

"Are you going to do my cooking justice, Master Bruce, or should I have saved my breath in protesting Miss Barbara's appropriation of all the chocolate cookies?"

"Sorry, Alfred," Bruce said in a reasonable attempt at penitence. "My mind was elsewhere."

"I'm sure," Alfred sniffed. He set the plate down, and moved to shake out the dressing gown at the foot of the bed.

Bruce finished the cookie before he spoke. "One of the dead kids was Damian Belcourt's daughter. She's only a few years younger than Dick."

"That is sad. Miss Jemima was a lovely child. I shall send a card of condolences."

Bruce didn't ask how Alfred knew the name of the girl. Over the years, Alfred had entertained assorted Wayne Enterprises directors and their families. Some had come and gone and blurred into the background; some had stayed long enough to make an impression on the old butler. "Dick never got into the wild party scene," he murmured.

"Master Dick knew the consequences of that lifestyle," remarked the older man, moving to fold back the bedcovers. "In no small part, thanks to your involvement of him in your nocturnal outings."

"He accused me of not caring, earlier," Bruce muttered. The young man's shot had hurt, and even Dick's adjustment of his statement didn't alleviate the initial stab.

"Your relationship with Master Dick has always been somewhat...adversarial," Alfred murmured. "Not terribly surprising considering your personalities and the difficulties you both have showing affection." He paused by the door. "Will there be anything more for the evening, Master Bruce?"

Bruce shook his head. "No, Alfred. Thank you. Get some sleep," he added. "You shouldn't have waited up."

"Who was home to stop me?" Alfred inquired. "And, Master Bruce...?"

"Yes?"

The old man's eyes twinkled a little as they rested on him, and Bruce saw the gleam of pride in the old sharp eyes. "I disagree with Master Dick's assessment of you; I believe the problem is not that you do not care, but that you care too much." There was a moment's pause for effect before Alfred added, "Good night," and closed the doors of the suite behind him.

Later, as Bruce lay back and stared up at the overhead canopy of his bed, he focused on the night's efforts to track the shipments that had come in through the _Madeira Star_ and tried to think like a criminal.

How could they have brought the shipments in? How could they have distributed them? Had Dick really checked the cargo loads as he'd said he had? Had he been as thorough as Bruce would have been?

He had to trust Dick. He had to trust himself and the training he'd given Dick through the years. The young man knew his skills and his limits, and was still learning to stretch them. Bruce was still learning to stretch his own limits, if it came down to that. Limits like the boundaries he'd set between him and Diana.

_The control you exercise to avoid killing them is not that which you would lose with me_

This was one of the moments where he hated the silences of his soul and his trained recollection. Her voice echoed in his mind and, coupled with the memory of her body beneath his in the training room, haunted him.

Desire stirred, coil upon coil of a hunger that wished to be sated in soft flesh.

Bruce groaned and turned over in bed. He couldn't allow himself to think of that now, not when he had Diana gently pushing his boundaries with every action, every word, every touch. It wasn't intentional or deliberate, it was just who she was and he had no defenses against that.

He needed everything that was him to go into fighting against Gotham. Because if it didn't...

As Batman, Bruce lived his life in shadows. The mask might come off, but the Bat remained - and nothing could or would ever change that. A wife, children, _family_ - those would come second to who he was as Batman: second to Gotham, and he had never yet met a woman who understood who and what he was, who believed in everything he did, and was willing to take him and everything he entailed.

A rich kid with issues didn't even scratch the surface of what he had become over the years.

_No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time._

He groaned again and climbed out of bed. He was tired, but tonight, sleep was beyond him. Instead, he pushed back the draperies of his windows to reveal the city that he had made his own. Bruce shivered in the pre-dawn cold and began a _tai-chi_ form to centre himself. As he moved slowly and smoothly through each stage, he emptied his mind of all thought, concentrating on the play and interplay of his muscles and his breathing.

When he finished the first form, he moved onto the second; and when that finished, he moved into the third. As he closed the third and final form, he exhaled and looked out at the city before him.

_His_ city. Gotham was his and would always come first in his life.

_Gotham needs the Batman - and the Batman needs Gotham. I wouldn't try to take you from your city, Bruce._

She had a gift, the ability to enter his mind and memory, unannounced, unheralded. She slipped into his consciousness as gently as miniscule motes of dust floated on the breeze - unnoticed until they formed a gentle patina on the surfaces around the house.

Other attractions had been immediate, obvious: Andrea, Selena, Talia, Lois, Zatanna...

Diana had been gradual, and unexpected in that way.

_You and I are just good friends. There's something more between you and Diana._ Zatanna's statement had been startling and canny, touched by the magician's insights.

It said something that the first time he and Diana had kissed, it was intended as a deceit - not of each other, but of the Thanagarians. The deceit had been delightful enough, but her embarrassment afterward was more for the precipitous nature of her actions than the kiss itself; she knew he hated being taken by surprise. And everything was a surprise with Diana.

The dawn was stealing across the sky overhead, the rich blackness of it slowly shading to midnight blue overhead, as the sun crept up behind the horizon, bringing with it the day. The sun would shortly rise and a new day would begin.

Down in Gotham, there were kids for whom no new days would ever begin and parents for whom the nightmare was only just beginning.

_You care; you just don't like other people to know it._ Nightwing's words rang in his ears again, laced with the bitterness that lay between them.

His son.

Tonight, he'd watched men and women leave the police precinct, shaken by what they had seen, witnessed, heard. Of the eighteen kids who'd attended the party that night, eight fatally overdosed, another five were critical, and the last five were emotional wrecks.

One couple had fought outside the precinct, the woman screaming at her husband. "_You were supposed to be going camping this weekend! And if you had gone, instead of staying for your stupid meeting, then this would never have happened!_" The man had stiffened, then moved away jerkily as his wife followed. "_He didn't even know you loved him - because you were always too busy with your work!_"

More than one man had flinched; more than one officer had winced; Gotham was not a city that lent itself to happy families.

"_I'd phone Babs again,_" Jim had muttered as Batman slipped into the Commissioner's office. "_But she wouldn't appreciate the wake-up call._" The career officer sighed as he sat back in his chair. "_Things like tonight make me wish I'd spent more time at home than at work._ _It's like that old story,_" Gordon said, "_If you knew the day someone you loved was going to die, you'd hold them a little closer, make them laugh a little more, spend just a little more time with them..._" Then the man smiled ruefully, returning to business. "_Guess this case cut closer to the bone than I figured._"

Although Batman said nothing to Gordon then, something in him understood. He could call Dick, but at this hour, Dick was most likely to be in bed - or on Barbara's couch, asleep.

A star twinkled on the horizon of the sky, a last-ditch attempt to be seen before the daylight swept in.

Bruce did some mental calculations and realised the Watchtower was in that part of space right now. Up there, the night watch would be changing place with the morning watch: overseen and co-ordinated by J'onn, but manned by people from all over the globe. The advantage of an international roster meant body clocks could remain in their timezones as the monitor duties cycled, as the events and dramas played out through the world and the universe. The US wasn't the only source of superpowers and metahumans - it was just the one that most reliably identified them.

Bruce rested one hand on the windowsill, looking up at the stars. Then he turned to look at the phone on the table. She'd just be coming off monitor duty now.

His hand reached for the phone. Then it drew back.

His fingers closed into a fist and he gritted his teeth. No, he couldn't. He didn't dare.

The afternoon she got injured by the volcano creature, Bruce had sat at the Watchtower computers, observing every angle they had on the beast. He'd watched the huge, fiery hands smack Diana out of its way, watched the limp deadweight of her body as it ploughed into the ground.

The creature should have been the focus of his attention, but the first time watching, he'd only seen her. He'd seen the burns and welts gleaming bright and awful on her skin as she tumbled through the air, and he'd had to grit his teeth, to remind himself that he needed to be impartial and distance himself from what was happening to her.

She was dangerous to him, and, through him, to the Batclan and the League. Bruce was well aware of the role he played to both groups: leader to the first, anchor to the second. He could not give up those roles - there was nobody he trusted to take over those positions. They needed him.

It was logical and sensible. Yet, somehow, all the logic in the world could not stop the emotion that took hold of him, then or now.

Before he could stop himself, his fingers were on the phone, dialling a number that scrambled a program in the Batcave. The program would activate a link to a handset in the Watchtower, and by dialling a specific number, he could get...

"Diana."

She answered promptly, although he could hear the slight laziness in her voice that indicated she was on the verge of sleep.

He shouldn't have called, but he had. He could hang up and leave her wondering. She would never know, although she was sharp enough to guess, and he would never tell.

_You care; you just don't like other people to know it._ Dick's words rang in his ears, and Bruce kept his fingers on the handset. He would _not_ hang up. Not after calling her like this. But he couldn't seem the find the words to say.

Great, a speechless Batman.

"Hello?" Now she sounded exasperated. "Is there anyone there?"

He found his voice, forced it past his lips. "Diana."

She paused. "Batman?" He could almost hear her mental adjustment, almost see the frown that drew her eyebrows together - the way her eyes narrowed slightly. "What's wrong? I saw the newsfeeds about the party. Do you require assistance in Gotham?"

_...because you were always too busy with your work!_

"No," he made himself say. "It's not...it's nothing to do with work. It's Bruce."

"Bruce?"

"Yes." It would be so easy to fall into the lazy tones of the playboy. He didn't. "I thought...I'd see how you were doing." A flimsy excuse - too flimsy for the Bat. She would see right through it.

"I'm doing fine, thank you for asking," she said. There was a pause, then, "Did Clark make you do this?"

His first instinct was to be offended. "Can you imagine Clark making _me_ do _anything_?"

She laughed then, like cool water closing over his head as he drowned. It would be an exquisite way to die - hearing her laughter. "I apologise for maligning you both, then!"

"Both of us?" He took mock-offense at her words.

"Yes." The smile was still in her voice as she said, "For suggesting that Clark would be so foolish as to try to force you to do anything, and for suggesting that you might be persuaded otherwise once you had your mind made up!"

"I'll take that as a compliment. Tenacity is a good thing."

"I suppose 'tenacity' is one way of describing it."

He grinned at the delicate tone of her voice, and found his way over to the armchair he'd sat in before. "What word would you use, Princess?"

"Stubborn," she said immediately. "Pig-headed, obstinate, inflexible, uncompromising."

Bruce had not expected to be spared. That wasn't Diana's way. And he'd heard all the accusations before - from friend and enemy alike.

"Yet wouldn't you agree that there are some matters on which a person should stick by their decision?"

"Of course."

"And the terms you mentioned are usually used by the side which has failed to persuade the other side to defect or change their position?"

There was a sigh at the other end of the line. "Bruce?"

"Yes, Princess?"

"Why am I talking to you at this hour of the morning?" There was at once a rhetorical aspect to her question, but also a hint of bewilderment at his call.

It was the Occam's Razor of answers: the simplest was also the correct one - and also the one most guaranteed to annoy her with its straightforwardness. "Because I called you, and you haven't yet hung up on me."

"Bruce..."

"I..." He paused, trying to find the words to say. He had faced down psychopaths and thieves, gone up against some of the most powerful beings in the universe armed with nothing more than his array of weaponry, and worked cheek-by-jowl with people who could pulverise him in an instant and yet who relied on him to speak his mind plainly.

At this moment, he couldn't speak anything plainly, let alone his mind.

"Bruce?"

"I wanted to hear your voice," he said at last. The words almost stuck in his throat and he stifled the tremors of his body as he uttered that truth.

Speaking his mind was easy; it was speaking his heart that was impossible.

In the pre-dawn dark, he could see her expression, the astonished look on her face, lips parted in an 'oh' of shock. Her eyes would be wide as she stared into the dark of her room, and her hair would tumble darkly over her bare shoulders, the only movement in the room as she registered his words.

"Diana?"

"You're hearing my voice now."

"I know," he said, relieved now that she'd picked up the thread of the conversation again. "But that was why I called."

She hesitated - and even through the phone he heard the catch of her breath that indicated she'd almost begun to ask a question but hadn't completed the words.

"What?"

"Bruce, what happened tonight?"

"Why do you assume--?"

"Because this is you, Bruce," she said, simply, and there was frustration in her voice - and a little fear. "Because you don't call people for anything other than business. You don't do favours, you don't make allowances, and even if you care, you don't show it. Yet you have called me at what must be nearly five in the morning in Gotham, saying it was just to hear my voice. It--" Diana paused, and when she spoke again there was a tiredness in her voice. "It doesn't make sense."

Perhaps he'd pushed her too hard, earlier tonight. Perhaps he'd done so in order to prove a point to himself.

_You'll lose her someday - whether to the fight or to another man._ The prospect of having to watch her die, and to be unable to stop it was a nightmare he'd never be without, but the thought of seeing her with another man was like a knife in his gut, tensing him with a wariness that was entirely automatic.

But just because it was automatic, didn't mean it was the right course of action.

_If you knew the day someone you loved was going to die, you'd hold them a little closer, make them laugh a little more, spend just a little more time with them..._

He was telling her about the night before he even realised he was speaking again. His words were short and clipped, Batman rather than Bruce, but the distinction blurred when he was around her; he was both personas and yet neither. And whether he spoke as Batman or Bruce, or the man who used both and yet neither, she still listened.

She listened - and talked - until the sun rose and she yawned in his ear. And by that time, they'd talked of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings, and argued and fought, but never explicitly mentioned what was or was not between them. Oh, they'd talked of Dick and Hippolyta, and duty and responsibility, of the League and the Batclan, and everything in between; but the topic that was the reason for this call went unsaid.

Finally, she was so tired, her voice faded away, and he just listened to her breathe for a few seconds and had time to wonder if the lure of sleep had proved too much for her, before she spoke into the receiver again.

"I'm about to fall asleep on you," she began. Bruce's mouth curved into a rueful smile as his body responded to the thought of her physically asleep on him, but she continued, unaware of his thoughts. "So I'm going to hang up now, Bruce."

The smile in her voice would be showing itself now in a graceful curve that he'd watched stretch over her lips often. He wasn't there to see it now, but he could imagine it only too easily.

"G'night, Bruce."

And for one instant, he was neither 'Batman' nor 'Bruce' but someone between the two: an ordinary man on the phone with a woman he loved. The moment was like chains dropping from his tongue, freeing him to say what he never would have otherwise said.

"Love you," he murmured.

"Mmhm," she answered, and it was a mark of her weariness that she didn't question his words at all, but merely replied with her own. "I know."

End of conversation.

Bruce listened to the terminating tone for a full five seconds before he put the phone down, smiling like an idiot.

_Love makes fools of us all. _Even Bruce Wayne, more usually known as Batman.

But as he settled himself back beneath the covers, sleep poking gently at the edges of his mind, Bruce reflected that he could do with a little more of this kind of idiocy.

----


End file.
